


nothing is a waste if you learn from it

by idrilka



Series: for all of the perfect things that i doubt [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Family Issues, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:59:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He didn’t expect this, based on his last season—didn’t expect to be drafted in the first round; second, maybe, if he were lucky, because nobody wants damaged goods for their first pick, and he’d already proven he couldn’t handle it, when the push came to shove. It was embarrassing, the way he played his last season in the juniors, and when Océanic won the Memorial Cup, it was more in spite of Ian being on the ice than because of him. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>He certainly didn’t expect a phone call from Jack Zimmermann not even half an hour after he’d left the stage.</i>
</p><p>(Ian Davies is drafted by the Providence Falconers in the first round. It's just a start.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decinq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/gifts).



> Dear Codie, I fully realize how painfully inadequate this gift is, in comparison to how much I love you and what you really deserve, but since I can't give you the world (even though I would if I could), and I can't fly halfway across the world to hug you today, I'm afraid this will have to do. I just love you so, so much, and you have no idea how happy it makes me to be able to call you my friend. You're the sweetest, kindest person I have ever met, and I'm just so blessed to know you. So happy birthday, my dearest, and I hope life gives you everything and then so much more, because that's what you deserve. And this--this is just a very, very tiny part of that, but I hope you enjoy it. ♥ ♥ ♥  
> To everyone else--I know some of you wanted to see more of Ian Davies, wanted to see how his rookie year with the Falconers would unfold. This is that story. It's also a pretty direct sequel to _maybe i'm waking up_ , even though the main focus has shifted from Jack and Bitty. Still, even though it's a different story about a different character, it's also a continuation of sorts, that carries the story forward into the Falcs' Cup year. I really, really hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to sharing this story with you.  
> Also, last but not least, huge thanks to lanyon for the amazing beta job and cheerleading, and to beardsley and Alyssa for crying about this boy with me on Twitter/Hangouts.  
> Title from The Oh Hello's _I Have Made Mistakes_.

He’s been doing laps for an hour when Jack joins him at the pool. 

Ian breaks water and slows to a stop, his feet touching the tile in the shallow end of the pool as he looks up at Jack, already wet from the shower, who sits at the edge of the pool for a second, then eases himself into the water. 

“You’re gonna overtrain.”

It’s not unlike Jack to be blunt when it comes to hockey, Ian has learned over the past few weeks he has spent in Providence, preparing for the training camp. But there’s something else in Jack’s voice, too, that makes the words sound like more than just a reprimand from the captain. Concern, maybe. Maybe understanding. 

The thing is, though—the thing is, Ian has no way of knowing if Jack is even going to _be_ his captain come October. The camp is still three weeks away, and they might still send him down to the minors. It’s not like he has any way of knowing. It’s not like he was a top draft pick, and even then, it’s never guaranteed. Not everyone can be Kent Parson.

He knows how it goes—they cut and cut, and cut, until there’s barely anyone left, especially in a year like this, when there have been barely any trades and no injuries that would free up spaces on the regular roster. Ian is not stupid; he knows his chances. Last year, there were two rookies who made it, and one of them was Jack Zimmermann, who, in a way, wasn’t a rookie at all. 

“It’s—” he tries to say, but Jack interrupts him before he can even get the words out. 

“You’ve been out here for an hour. And that’s not counting the weight training and the hour on a treadmill,” he says, and Ian has no idea how he even knows about that. He wasn’t even _there_. “Schumer ratted on you,” Jack explains, and this time, he smiles the faintest of smiles. “Then told me to go make sure you don’t keel over and drown in the pool. Says it would make the organization look bad.”

There’s an edge of teasing to Jack’s words, and a corner of his mouth lifts up in a small, crooked smile. Ian tries to laugh, but his entire chest feels tight. 

“The camp is three weeks away,” Jack tells him, as if he wasn’t painfully aware of that, and Ian wants to say, _yeah, and I’m out of time_. 

“You need to pace yourself or there will be nothing of you _left_ by the time camp starts,” Jack continues. “I know it’s tempting to just throw yourself all in, but this is not the playoffs. You’re gonna need all that strength. Go home, Davies, get yourself some nice lunch, lots of protein, some carbs. We can go running together tomorrow morning.”

The other thing Ian has learned about Jack by now is that Jack prefers to run outdoors, while Ian genuinely likes the treadmill better, but it’s not like he’s going to just refuse the captain of the Falconers when he offers. He’s not stupid. 

“Uh, sure,” he says as he heaves himself out of the pool and onto the slippery tile. “What time should I come over?”

Jack grips the edge of the starting block. “Six? Six thirty?” he says, looking up at Ian. 

Ian licks his lips, swallows. “Yeah, I’ll be there at six.”

It’s a habit. He gets up at five, has a light snack, works out for at least two hours, comes back to eat breakfast. He’s been doing this for as long as he can remember, can barely recall a time when this _wasn’t_ his life. Even before he got drafted by Rimouski, back when he still played in Maine in the minors, he would be up even before their dad and out by the time anyone else was awake.

Years later, he still doesn’t know how to sleep in. 

Once he’s out of the pool, Ian showers, changes into his street clothes and downs half a bottle of Gatorade on the way to his car. Now that he’s not in the water anymore, doing lap after lap after lap, it hits him suddenly how exhausted he is, his muscles screaming in pain. It’s a good, satisfying pain that always comes after an intense workout, but it feels draining, too, in a way Ian has no idea what to do with, because he has a training regimen for a reason. 

It’s not going to be like last year, where he spent most of the time on the bench or not scoring, shaking uncontrollably in the showers afterwards, his teeth chattering even though the water was scalding hot. He’s been enough of a disappointment already. He won’t let this happen a second time, on a different team, in a different city, in a different _league_. 

He’s made it this far, and he knows what people have been saying about him—back home and in the papers, and on the internet—and he _knows_ he needs to do better. To _be_ better. 

He didn’t expect this, based on his last season—didn’t expect to be drafted in the first round; second, maybe, if he were lucky, because nobody wants damaged goods for their first pick, and he’d already proven he couldn’t handle it, when the push came to shove. It was embarrassing, the way he played his last season in the juniors, and when Océanic won the Memorial Cup, it was more in spite of Ian being on the ice than because of him. 

He certainly didn’t expect a phone call from Jack Zimmermann not even half an hour after he’d left the stage.

He’d never met him before that conversation, but he knew about Jack. They all did. Everyone in Quebec knew about Jack Zimmermann—you don’t get to live in a place where hockey is religion and not know about its gods. 

There used to be a lot of talk about them in and out of the locker room—Parson and Zimmermann, the best hockey duo in living history—and then there was Guy, one of the assistant coaches who used to play with them back when the two of them were tearing through the junior stats, and he liked to talk about how great Zimmermann was, how great he was with Parson, how what they had and what they did could not be replicated.

He didn’t talk about the rest. 

So it was a bit surreal, getting that call in the middle of all the chaos, when Ian was almost too overwhelmed to think straight, but he thinks he knows why Jack did this and he’s grateful that he did. 

It was easier, somehow, coming to Providence, knowing there were people who _wanted_ him here. 

Now that he’s here, though, he needs to earn his keep.

.

There’s a message from Brian when Ian checks his phone on the way home, stuck in traffic because of some accident further up the road.

From: **B.**  
_what’s up, little bro? been quiet lately. everything okay?_   
(11:34 am)

The thing is—Ian knows Brian means well, that what his texts are really trying to say is, _I’m sorry_. Ian knows Brian didn’t mean all these things he said the last time they saw each other; the last time they fought. The fact that he didn’t mean them doesn’t mean they’re not true, though, and Ian knows that, too, and that—that is the worst thing. 

He doesn’t answer the message because the long column of cars in front of him finally starts to move at a slow pace, and he’s almost forgotten about it by the time he’s home. 

Blueberry comes to greet him, her tail wagging, and Ian dumps his bag on the floor, then bends down to scratch her behind the ears. 

The apartment is empty. Cory has flown down to Pittsburgh and Holster is out of town, in Boston with his…whoever Justin is—boyfriend, Ian supposes—helping him with his move before grad school starts. 

He’s met Justin only once, briefly, but he’s known about him, however vaguely, from following NCAA hockey from time to time in the juniors. He and Holster had a bit of a reputation as the most ruthless D-men duo in the entire ECAC, and he’s heard stories from the guys on Team USA at World Juniors who played NCAA hockey.

It feels strange, living on his own, if only for a few days, because for as long as Ian can remember, it’s always been either his family or the billet family, or a roommate, snoring softly on the next bed, but never just Ian himself. 

He almost calls Yannick out of habit, before he remembers Yannick is in Toronto, training before the start of the Leafs’ camp, but he still sends him a quick text as he microwaves the leftovers from yesterday. 

The text from his brother is still there when Ian scrolls down his message app, and he sits there for a moment, rice steaming in front of him, as he tries to think of something to say. _i’m good. busy. tired, though_ , he sends in the end, and it’s not even a lie. It’s simple, to the point, the way Brian likes it. 

He doesn’t get a reply immediately, but then again, he doesn’t expect it. If Brian is back at the base, he’s probably out, running drills. 

When he finally sits down on the couch with the plate in front of him on the coffee table, Blueberry trots over and jumps onto the cushions to sit next to him, curled against his thigh. He snaps a picture and sends it to Cory. 

To: **Cory**  
_taking care of your baby :)_   
(14:08 pm)  


.

He wakes up before five the next day, eats a protein bar and showers quickly before changing into his running gear. 

The drive over to Jack’s place is quick at this time, and he makes it there in less than fifteen minutes, which means it’s only five forty when he parks in front of Jack’s apartment complex, right by the front gate. He’s too early, he knows, and he doesn’t want to intrude on Jack’s morning routine, so he sits by himself in the car, browsing the internet on his phone and furiously biting at his cuticles until the skin around his thumbnail is jagged and raw. It’s a nasty habit, he knows, and Yannick always tried to get him to stop, would swat at his hands whenever he saw Ian gnawing at his skin, but he could never train himself out of it. 

Finally, at five to six, he gets out of the car, locks the door and rings the bell to Jack’s apartment. Jack lets him in almost immediately and Ian doesn’t wait for the elevator, jogging up the stairs instead. When he arrives at the door of Jack’s apartment, it’s already set ajar, and Jack says, “Come on in, it’s open,” when he hears Ian’s steps. 

He’s been to Jack’s apartment only once before, and it looked at the same time immaculate and lived-in, the kind of amazing living space Ian could never dream of, with his three brothers, his parents and himself under one roof for the longest time, before Brian and Kevin enlisted. He can see the traces of Eric—Bitty—left all around the place, even though he’s back at his college, ready to start his senior year, ready to graduate. 

Ian wonders sometimes, what it would be like, to go to college instead of going to an NHL team. He could probably get in on a hockey scholarship, and play on an NCAA team, and maybe he would even end up in the NHL after all. Maybe he’d go in the draft in his last year of eligibility, and maybe he’d try to get signed as an unrestricted free agent. But he’s here now, despite everything that happened last year, and there’s no point in thinking about the what-ifs. 

“You eaten anything?” Jack asks as he walks out of the kitchen, two bottles of water in hand. He tosses one of them to Ian. 

“Yeah,” Ian says. “I’m all good to go.”

Jack bends down to lace his running shoes, then grabs the keys and opens the door. 

“Okay, then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

The route they take is only semi-familiar to Ian, who doesn’t really know Providence that well yet, but Jack takes the lead with the quiet kind of confidence that characterizes everything Jack does.

Ian knows the story, though, because everybody who’s followed hockey at some point in the last ten years knows the story. But it’s so at odds with the Jack he knows that it might have just as well happened to a different person. Then again, maybe if it had happened to a different person, Jack wouldn’t be the same man he knows at all.

“Can I ask you something?” Ian says as they circle back in the direction of Jack’s condo. There’s a breakfast place on their way back, a few blocks from Jack’s apartment complex, where they sometimes get their eggs and protein to go before going back to shower and eat. 

Jack turns to look at him, not breaking his pace. “Sure, go ahead,” he says.

“How did you know you would make it?” Ian asks, breathless from more than the exercise. “You know, when you first signed.”

Jack halts to an abrupt stop and looks at Ian with his hands braced on his knees, half-bent over, even though he doesn’t really seem to be out of breath, his conditioning impeccable. 

There’s a long, long moment when Jack doesn’t say anything, just stares at Ian like he’s seen a ghost. Then he says, “I didn’t.”

.

It gnaws at Ian, what Jack said back on their run, for the next few days, as he turns it over in his head time and time again. 

He calls Yannick two days later, already in bed and with Discovery muted on his tv, half-watching some World War II documentary. It’s still early enough that Yannick should be up, and he picks up after three rings. 

“What’s up?” Yannick says into the phone on the other end of the line, and it’s been a while since they really talked, apart from text messages here and there, much less talked face to face. It’s nice to hear the familiar voice, the traces of the Quebecois accent that Jack has gotten rid of for the most part over the years. “Missed me?”

“How are you doing, back in the enemy territory?” Ian asks, and he hears the way Yannick laughs into the receiver. Ian makes himself more comfortable on the pillows that have been slipping out from under his head for the past few minutes, inch by inch.

“I’m holding on,” Yannick says, still laughing. “Also keeping my Habs jerseys deep in the closet. Nobody’s tried to shiv me yet, so I must be doing something right.”

Ian plays with the corner of his comforter, running his nail along the seam. “When does your camp start?” he asks. 

“Eight days,” Yannick says with a loud exhale, then, “I’m scared shitless.”

Ian takes a deep breath, then another and another, makes his hand into a tight fist around the comforter, bites his lip. His heart is hammering against his ribs.

“You?” Yannick asks after Ian has been quiet for too long.

“Two weeks,” he says, willing his voice to sound normal. He swallows around the tightness in his throat. “And…me too.”

.

Cory flies back to Providence three days before the camp starts, and Dani picks him up from the airport. Ian knows they’re coming long before he can see or hear them, because Blueberry is running in circles in front of the door, her tail wagging like she’s never been so happy in her life.

The fridge is stocked, the apartment is tidy, and there are no dirty dishes piling up in the sink. Holster is due back tomorrow, so it’s been only Ian and Blueberry living here for the past two weeks, and he learned how to pick up after himself a long time ago. 

“Did you miss me, baby girl?” Ian hears Cory say in a quiet voice, and Blueberry whines excitedly. He can hear the way her claws click against the hardwood floor as she jumps up and down. 

He comes out into the hall. 

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the wall next to where Cory is still being enthusiastically greeted by his dog, and Dani waves at him, then pulls out her phone and takes a picture. When she shows them the photo, it’s a snapshot of the two of them: Cory is getting his face licked thoroughly by Blueberry while Ian watches, amused.

“That’s fucking adorable, I’m uploading this to the team Insta,” she says, tapping away on her phone. “Look, if the Caps can milk this roomies shit for all it’s worth, then so can you, is all I’m saying.”

Cory finally gets to his feet, despite Blueberry’s protests, and bumps shoulders with Ian. 

“How’ve you been, roomie?” he asks, grinning widely, then adds, “Hey, thanks for taking care of Blueberry, for real, dude.”

Ian smiles awkwardly. “It’s not a big deal, really.”

The truth is, he loves this dog. He remembers they used to have a dog, too, before he started playing hockey—a big, furry Alaskan Malamute that got really sick the year Ian made his first team, and then there was no time for pets, not really, not when there was hockey to be played and practice to get to, and then he moved away to his billet family, and there were no pets at the house, either.

It’s nice, he thinks, to have this, even though the dog doesn’t even belong to him in the first place. 

“C’mon,” Cory says then, dumping his bag carelessly in the hallway by the wall, “I’m fucking beat, but I’m also fucking hungry, so we’re going out to lunch. My treat, so don’t even think you’re getting out of this one.”

They go to a nearby steakhouse to eat their weight in protein, and Cory tells Ian about last year’s camp: how he thought his body would just straight up give up and die by the end of day one, how he thought Jack was _intense_ before he really got to know him, how the guys from the farm team tended to stick together, even though the rookies had no idea where they would go at the end of the camp, if they were going to be cut even before it was over. 

“Guess they didn’t want to get their hopes up,” Ian says, and he can understand that. It’s not about settling, it’s about not setting yourself up for a disappointment. And it’s not like everyone who gets sent down is stuck in the minors forever, but the truth is that it’s just a tiny percentage of guys who manage to climb their way up and _stay_.

“You’re gonna be fine, my dude,” Cory says, elbowing Ian in the ribs.

Ian really, really wants to believe that.

.

He doesn’t sleep the night before the first day of camp. 

It’s a five-thirty wake-up call, and he can’t afford to take any sleeping pills, because they make him groggy and then his reflexes are shot to hell, so he twists and turns until three a.m., bile rising in his throat every time he checks the time on his phone. The harder he tries to fall asleep, the more restless he feels, his entire body thrumming with nervous energy he has no idea what to do with. 

At quarter past three, he gets out of bed and walks into the bathroom, splashes his face with cold water and looks at his reflection in the mirror. He doesn’t like what he sees: the panic rising in his face, barely contained.

He can’t call his parents. He probably shouldn’t call Yannick, because it’s past three in the morning, and the Leafs’ camp is not over yet, and he can’t fuck up Yannick’s chances of making the team just because he can’t deal with the scary probability of his own.

He knows how to live with sleepless nights, with not getting enough rest because his body won’t let him, but tomorrow—today—is huge, and he can’t take any chances. 

He doesn’t know how much time he spends in the bathroom, under the harsh, bright lights, trying to keep quiet and not wake up Cory and Holster.

He feels faintly sick.

It’s almost funny, how the goalposts keep shifting. Before summer, his greatest fear was that he wouldn’t go in the first round in the draft—second, third, maybe, if he was really lucky, with the season he’d had. Now, it’s the same cold, ruthless panic that makes his body lock up at the thought of getting sent down to the minors on the first day. 

He swallows painfully and closes his eyes for a moment. Just two more hours until his alarm finally rings.

.

He’s the first one up, mostly because he never went to sleep in the first place, and he makes breakfast for himself and coffee for everyone. He’s finishing his second piece of toast when Holster stumbles into the kitchen, yawning into the back of his hand. 

“Thanks, man,” he says when Ian offers him a cup of coffee, then downs half of it in one go. 

He doesn’t look rattled by the prospect of the camp, but then again, he knows exactly where he’s standing. 

Cory comes in a few minutes later, and he doesn’t look much more awake than Holster does, his hair sticking out in all directions as he continues to run his fingers through it, only half-conscious by Ian’s estimates.

They’re some of the first at the arena, and when they come into the locker room, it’s empty, save for Jack, who looks up from his stall as they enter, then tugs on his Under Armour and reaches for the pads.

Cory makes for his stall as well, sitting comfortably next to Jack, while Ian hovers in the doorway for a moment, looking for a free spot on the bench to sit down and start changing. He’s half-naked and getting into his own Under Armour when he hears voices coming closer and closer, and then the door opens as Schumer and Aaronowitz come in, laughing and pushing at each other, Bergson just a few steps behind them. 

“Zimms, my man, what’s up?” Schumer says as he moves to clap Jack on the shoulder. “Ready to show these rookies how we do it in Providence? I’m so pumped. I fucking _love_ camp.”

“Yeah,” Bergson chimes in and chucks a rolled-up pair of socks at Schumer’s head, “but that’s because you’re a fucking nutcase. No offence, Zimms.”

Jack shrugs, smiling slightly as he ducks his head to hide it, and Schumer gives Bergson the finger. 

“Please, I’m a fucking delight,” he says. 

The rest of the team start piling in after a while, and the room descends into a cacophony of noise that makes Ian’s skin itch. It’s at the same time strange and familiar, the rhythm of the locker room, but it’s a different, foreign one, and he doesn’t really know any of these people, who joke with each other with the easy camaraderie that comes from years of playing together, the kind of playful banter that you cannot fake. The beats like to go on and on about chemistry in hockey, and this locker room has that in spades, in a way that makes Ian feel like nothing more but a trespasser, looking from the outside in.

The guys from the farm team are in the visitors’ locker room, but the rookies are here, all looking equally green around the gills. He doesn’t really know any of them personally, only by reputation; most of them played in the USHL or NCAA, and none of them went to World Juniors, so it feels a bit like first day back in school, with everyone trying to catch up and not let their nervousness show.

There’s a moment where Ian feels faintly like he’s going to be sick, just before they get out onto the ice. He grips his stick with both hands and tries to force them to stop shaking. 

It’s gonna be fine, he keeps repeating in his head as he breathes through it. 

It’s gonna be fine. He’s gonna be fine.

.

It’s not a complete disaster, but, in Ian’s mind, it might just be the next best thing. 

He flubs more passes than he receives, and some of his shots on goal go in, but he’s not in any way consistent. They run drills in the morning until Ian feels like he wants to puke, and not just from nerves this time, then take a short break and come back to the ice to start on line work. The head coach—Mark—tries him out on the line with the other rookies first: Hibbert and Eaton, then Ayton and Hayashi; then he tells them to mix it up and puts him on the third line with Domashev and Leyta, who have been with the franchise for a few years at this point, Domashev drafted back in two thousand eleven, Leyta traded a year later from the Schooners. They’ve been playing with each other on one line for far longer than just the few hours Ian’s had to get accustomed to the rhythm of the puck hitting the tape as they pass back and forth along the length of the ice.

He’s missed five passes in a row when he hears the shrill sound of the whistle piercing the cold air at the arena, and Mark skates out to them, then looks at Ian and gestures back to the tunnel with his head, a sharp, decisive gesture that makes Ian’s stomach lurch. 

“Davies, you’re done for today, go hit the showers,” Mark says, then turns back and continues, his voice raised to let everyone hear him, “Line two, you’re up. You know the drill. Christiansen, go get the puck. Schumer, to the faceoff circle. Let’s go.”

Ian skates off the ice, ears ringing. 

It’s almost a relief, to know that he’s been right all along, that they’re going to cut him on day one, that he won’t have to agonize over it any longer. 

He needs to call his parents. His agent, maybe, to let him know, even though he’ll probably be notified as soon as possible. 

The shame burns through him, bitter in his throat as Ian showers and doesn’t let himself cry. His heart is pounding in his chest, and he can feel piercing pain in his side, on the left, just below the ribs. He presses his fingers against his ribcage for a moment, until his skin gives way a little and his fingertips leave red marks that fade almost as soon as he moves the hand away.

Back in the locker room, he spends a long while sitting on the bench in just his towel, then slowly, mechanically dresses into his street clothes and waits. 

The others start to slowly trickle in after less than an hour, and most of them give Ian a wide berth. They’re all exhausted, but still talk over the general noise of the locker room; Jack looks at him from his stall but doesn’t approach him, then changes quickly and leaves the room. 

After a moment, Ian sees Cory come out of the showers and into the locker room, clearly looking for Ian, and he gets up to leave before Cory can say anything. 

He walks the length of the hallway, completely deserted as the players are still changing, and stops in his tracks only when he hears voices coming from around the corner. When he hears his name. 

“I’m not saying I’m gonna listen, but I want to hear your opinion, Jack,” Mark says. “You seem very…determined to help Davies make the team. So? What do you think? You know he can do better. We’ve _seen_ him do better. So what do you make of it?”

There’s a moment of silence, then Ian hears Jack say, “Right now he’s not playing to his full potential because he’s terrified. He needs to know he’s not going to fall into obscurity in Pawtucket, the top NHL prospect who couldn’t quite cut it. Believe me, I would know.”

He knows he has about ten minutes before they let the press in and he desperately needs to get it together, but his heart is pounding in his ears, and he leans against the wall with his eyes closed. 

He has no idea how to look at Jack after what he’s just heard—what he was never supposed to hear in the first place—because it’s _huge_ , to have someone like Jack Zimmermann believe in you in a way not many people do, despite everything. He doesn’t really understand why, but then again, maybe he does.

The journalists start to file in a moment later for the media scrum, and suddenly it’s all noise and cameras, and blinding lights flashing in his eyes. There’s a huge group of them around Jack, who looks to the side and smiles at Ian before he starts taking questions, small clusters of reporters around some of the other players who have already come out of the locker room, but there’s more than a few of them in front of Ian, too. He knows they watched the practice from the stands, knows they’ve seen everything that happened back on the ice. 

“What do you think happened today?” asks one of the reporters, whose face and name Ian doesn’t recognize. “You struggled a lot in practice, mostly with timing, but your stick-handling was all over the place, too. How would you describe your performance today?”

“Lacking,” Ian says, his voice quieter than he expected, hoarse. He clears his throat and repeats it, then adds, “I know I didn’t play to my full potential today, and I have no excuses. I should’ve been better, back there, and I know there’s a long way ahead of me.” 

“You had a rough season your last year with the Océanic,” the reporter continues and Ian nods, because there’s nothing that he can say to that. It’s true. “Lots of missed shots, lots of time spent on the bench. How do you plan to move forward, move on from that?”

Ian shrugs in a way he hopes doesn’t come off as dismissive, then says, “It’s just all about hard work, I think. You just need to, uh, learn how to come back from these falls and get back up, and try to work harder not to fall. I…I just need to figure out a way to be better for this team, to work hard to be better and not disappoint the organization that took a chance on me back in Buffalo. I’ve had a rough start, but I want to give it my all. I—”

He hates the way the flash of the cameras makes his vision swim. 

He makes it to the end of the media scrum, somehow, but when the journalists leave him, Jack is still answering questions. Cory comes up to him, also done answering questions, and bumps his shoulder against Ian’s. 

“They go hard, huh?” he says, like he doesn’t have a spot on the first line, like he doesn’t play wing on one line with the team captain. “Don’t worry, for real, they’re all talk. No one is blaming you for today, or, like, thinking you suck or whatever. I almost puked in the trash can last year, I was so nervous.” Cory bumps their shoulders again. “Seriously, it gets better. They’re only grilling you about last year because they have nothing else on you, and it’s bullshit anyway.”

The truth is, Ian has no idea what exactly happened last year. It was just the nerves, and it felt like he was being constantly _blocked_ , slow and unfocused, like the ice became his enemy instead of an old, trusted friend. It was the nights when he couldn’t sleep and the days when he felt more nauseated than anything else. 

He knew what they were saying about him—that he was supposed to be the next Kent Parson, small and fast, and a mean shot with the technical skills to match, and maybe—maybe he was all that, until he suddenly wasn’t. 

Halfway through the season, he started dreading coming home. 

The thing, he guesses, about living in a small town is that it’s never just you and the anonymous crowd around you; it’s that whether you win or you lose, it becomes personal for more people than just you and your family. It’s the way of small towns, he thinks, to care about their own in a way that doesn’t leave much room for error, the pedestal they’ve put you on strangely restrictive rather than elevating. 

In Searsport, everyone knows everyone. It’s a curse as much as it is a blessing. 

“Hey, dude, you okay?” Cory asks, nudging him with an elbow to the side. “We’re going out to eat, wanna come with?”

Ian thinks of saying no. It would probably make it easier on him if he gets cut after all, in a sort of _don’t know what you’re missing_ sense. But if he’s supposed to do things differently here, maybe it’s time to start now.

“Sure,” he says, and he smiles at Cory. “I could eat.”

.

They start cutting on the third day. 

The first one to go is the round seven pick, a guy called Alec that Ian spent some time on a line with on day two, followed by the round five pick, a D-man picked up from the NCAA, followed by Hibbert, who was the second round pick and did much better on the first day than Ian did.

Ian grits his teeth and skates harder, pushing himself even more. He still feels wrong-footed a lot of the time, unused to the rhythm the team has worked out during endless hours of practice last year, and the year before, and the one before that, in all the time they’ve had to build rapport and chemistry, and the kind of understanding that lets them pass the puck without looking at each other. 

He still catches himself looking for Yannick to his left, counting out the seconds in passes that miss, because this team is not Rimouski, and they play completely different hockey that sometimes leaves Ian desperately trying to catch up.

It’s good, though, in other ways. More of his shots on goal go in, and Bergson is a damn good goalie, so it’s not like Ian is scoring empty-netters left and right, or that he’s scoring on some subpar backup goalie from the last minor team in the stands. He finds a good rhythm when they put him on one line with Eaton and Mercer, and it’s the best he’s been all camp. It’s not effortless and it’s not flawless, but it’s _something_ , and Ian will take whatever he can get at this point.

It’s something else entirely, though, to watch Jack play. 

There was a lot of talk about him and Parson back in Rimouski, because it was hard _not_ to talk about the best players this team had seen in recent years, when they were making history both on and off the ice. So it’s not like Ian didn’t know Jack was supposed to be a great player, it’s not like he couldn’t see that in the highlights and repeats on Gamecenter, but to see it on screen and to see it in person are two entirely different things. 

Jack’s hockey, viewed from the distance of no more than thirty yards, is breathtaking.

When his line finally skates off the ice after a long drill, Ian feels like it’s him who’s just been running suicides for the past hour, his heart beating frantically in his chest when Jack approaches the bench and sits down next to Ian, then reaches for his water bottle, spits out the mouthguard and takes a long drink. 

“Good practice, eh?” he says, looking to the side to glance at Ian, and one corner of his mouth lifts up in a smile.

Ian stops re-taping his stick and grins. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s been pretty great.”

.

Yannick calls him on day four to tell him he’s made the team. 

“You’re doing fine, by the way,” he says then, as if anticipating Ian’s train of thought. “I hope you don’t read that crap on the Internet or anything, yeah? Googling yourself is the worst idea ever. Seriously, kids, don’t try this at home. This way lies madness.”

Ian laughs despite himself, leaning against the wall of the burger place they’ve decided on for lunch. There’s a large group of them inside, occupying two tables in a huge booth—mostly the guys from the regular roster, plus Holster. Ian is one of the two rookies left who haven’t been sent down to the minors yet, but the other guy, Sams—a D-man drafted from the Madison Capitols—mostly keeps to himself and hasn’t really tried to bond with the team outside the rink. He does well enough during drills, and he has some chemistry going with Simmons and Parker on the D-line, but he mostly disappears as soon as practice is over for the day. 

“Look, it could’ve been worse,” Yannick continues, and Ian can hear the teasing note in his voice. “Richard Stewart could be writing about you.”

Ian snorts. “You can’t see me, but I’m crossing myself as we speak.”

There’s a moment of silence on the line, then Yannick says, serious all of a sudden, “Hey, you’re gonna be fine, yeah? You’ll show them. All of them.”

Ian swallows thickly and says goodbye, then goes back inside just to walk into the middle of some conversation that goes over his head for the most part, since it involves something that happened last season, but then Schumer says, “Hey, Zimms, your folks are coming to the home opener, right? That’s, like, tradition, and your dad should know better than mess with hockey mojo.”

“Yeah, man,” Aaronowitz chimes in, “we kicked the Bruins’ collective asses last year, it doesn’t get any better than that, and we’re playing the Aces this year.”

Jack puts away his water. “So what you’re really saying is that my dad is the team mascot.”

They all laugh, but Aaronowitz shakes his head. “No, dude,” he says, “your _boy_ is the team mascot. Your dad is the good luck charm.”

“And speaking of,” Schumer starts again, “is your better half coming, too?”

Before Jack can open his mouth to answer, Bergson only rolls his eyes and says, “Please, like that boy doesn’t have season tickets for the management box.”

It surprises Ian, how fondly they speak about Eric, but then again, maybe it shouldn’t, because Eric is pretty impossible not to like. 

But the thing is, it feels sometimes like there are really two faces of hockey—the one where players get together on podcasts or shows and talk about acceptance and change, and the one where slurs over the faceoff dot or in the locker room inevitably go to _fag_ , where _that’s gay_ doesn’t even register anymore after some time. So, in a way, it’s good to know it’s not just for show, the support Jack has gotten from the organization since last Spring, that it’s not just faked for the media and fed into the narrative of the first out hockey player in the NHL.

It’s a nice change of pace from the juniors, where—for those guys Ian knew were gay or bi, and all those others he had no idea about—things sucked most of the time, because if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that teenagers can be cruel. 

And yeah, it’s not the entire league, or the entire sport, but it’s something, it’s a start. 

Jack laughs quietly in response, and Ian could swear he’s blushing a little. “Yeah,” he says, “he does, and he’ll be here. They don’t have a game that Friday, so he can come down.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Schumer asks, “Soooo…is he bringing pie?”

.

Ian doesn’t sleep well before the last day of the camp. It’s not another completely sleepless night, but he tosses and turns, and then tosses some more, walks over to the kitchen to drink some water, then gets back to sleep for about an hour, rinse and repeat. 

He goes to use the bathroom around three a.m. and runs straight into Holster, who’s just coming out and almost yelps when he sees Ian in the hallway. 

“ _Bro_ ,” he says. “Not cool. I definitely didn’t sign up for a fucking heart attack in the middle of the night.”

Ian tries to smother a laugh. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t think anyone else would be up.”

Holster looks at him with the scrutiny of someone who used to wear the A and took it seriously. He doesn’t have his glasses on, though, so Ian has no way of knowing how much of that is actual scrutiny and how much is squinting because Holster is apparently blind as a bat.

“Jitters keeping you up?” Holster asks, and Ian nods, because it would be ridiculous to even try to deny it.

Holster pats him on the shoulder in a way that somehow doesn’t feel patronizing. 

“You’re gonna be fine, dude, don’t sweat it,” he says. “Those people they really wanted to send down? They’ve already been sent down.”

Ian doesn’t really share Holster’s optimism, but when he crawls back into bed, he manages solid two hours of sleep before he wakes up again sometime after five. It doesn’t make sense to go back to sleep, since he needs to get up in less than thirty minutes, so he just scrolls Twitter and Deadspin, against better judgment, and it’s all fine until he stumbles upon an article linked by someone on Twitter. The title says, _Falcs Cut Dead Weight_. His picture is front and center.

The rational part of his mind tells him to calm down, to remember all those nasty articles people wrote about Jack before he got onto the ice and shut them up with his point streaks and face-off wins average, to just close the app and go back to sleep for the fifteen minutes he has left until his alarm rings, but he clicks through the link and reads the entire thing from start to finish, then reads the comments, too, for good measure. 

When his alarm finally blares in the darkness of his room, he stumbles out of bed and goes to the kitchen, where Cory is already making them eggs for breakfast. 

“Dude, you okay?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at Ian. 

Ian pours himself a cup of coffee, his face turned away from Cory in case he notices how shaken Ian is. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. 

Maybe—maybe there will come a day when he stops saying that when it’s the opposite of the truth, but if he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t know how to stop pretending, how to be anything other than _fine_.

That’s what he’s always needed to be, that’s what other people have always needed him to be, so he has always been just that. Fine. 

_Be brave_ , his mother used to tell him.

He goes through the motions of his morning routine, and he has no idea what’s happened to all that time between getting out of bed and getting into Cory’s car to go to the arena. 

In the locker room, he changes quickly, efficiently, and he’s one of the first players on the ice. They work on passing for most of the day, and he feels his heart beating frantically in his throat every time the puck is about to hit his tape, petrified with the possibility that he might miss, that he might miss one too many, and that’s what ultimately gets him sent down to the minors on the last day of camp.

Dead weight. 

Intellectually, he knows it’s not a punishment. He knows that even top draft picks sometimes do their time in the minors for a season or two. But also, with the way his last season had gone, it would be like an admission, proof that he wasn’t good enough to cut it in the first place and maybe the fact that he got drafted in the first round was a fluke. A mistake. 

They finish with a scrimmage, and Ian’s team scrapes by just by the skin of their teeth, but it’s enough. There’s nothing like the endorphin rush after a win, and when Cory bumps into him, saying, “Good fucking job, liney,” Ian’s smile is completely genuine, the jitters gone for these few minutes until his endorphin high crashes.

He waits, after, for the news; he waits to be summoned to the head coach’s office, to hear the somber, _we think you’d be a better fit for the Eagles, for now_. His knee is bouncing and his knuckles are white where he’s clasping his hands together, because that’s better than seeing them shake.

It’s Jack who comes to see him instead, and he sits on the bench next to him in the now deserted locker room. 

“So,” Jack says. He looks calm next to Ian, cool and composed, and every inch the captain Ian imagined.

“So,” Ian says back, even though it sounds stupid and unnecessary, but it fills the void.

After a moment of silence, Jack smiles and bumps their shoulders together. 

“Welcome,” he says, “ to the Providence Falconers.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, thank you so much for the amazing feedback! I cannot express how happy I am that you're all enjoying this story. So, really, thank you so much!  
> After this somewhat lengthy break, the updates should become more regular, since my workload this semester is considerably lighter and I'm not teaching classes.  
> Also, as usual, huge thanks to Codie for amazing beta, and to lanyon for equally amazing cheerleading. ♥

A week before their first preseason game, Domashev breaks two ribs at the tail end of practice. He’s on Ian’s line, so Ian is right there on the ice when it happens. It’s a freak accident more than anything else—a combination of a momentary lapse in judgment, a chip in the ice that shouldn’t have been there to begin with, and some extremely bad fucking luck. 

In the end, Domashev leaves the ice cursing up a storm; they evaluate him at the hospital and place him on long-term IR, then recall Evan Crozier from the Eagles to fill in the gap on the third line. 

“Rosy, what the fuck, it’s been ages, man!” Schumer says when Crozier walks into the dressing room the next day before practice. He looks tired around the eyes, like he didn’t sleep too well, but also confident in a way Ian doesn’t know if he could muster in his place. 

“Camp was like three weeks ago, you moron.” Christiansen lobs a roll of tape at Schumer; it manages to hit him square in the chest and bounce off to land on the floor a couple feet away. 

“Fuck off, Christiansen.” Schumer throws the tape back, and Christiansen catches it one-handed. “The heart wants what the heart wants, okay?”

It all clicks for Ian a moment later, when he realizes Crozier went to the Falcs in the same draft year that Schumer did, and they played together in juniors on the Giants. It’s easier, he guesses, to come up from the minors when you already know someone on the regular roster so well.

Jack comes in about five minutes later, and he makes sure to say hello to Crozier first thing before he even sets down his bag. 

There’s a bunch of kids in the stands from the Falcs foundation, here to watch the practice and then get some things signed once they’re done, and Ian waves at two little girls in Zimmermann jerseys who are bouncing excitedly on their heels with their noses almost pressed to the glass. The girls wave back, suddenly shy. 

“I fucking love kids,” Cory says to Ian’s right as they start to warm up. “You can’t fake that kind of enthusiasm, and it just blows my mind that we’re making their fucking _week_ just by letting them see us do our thing, y’know? It’s kind of amazing when you think about it.”

It sort of is, when you put it like that. 

By the end of practice, the lines have been re-shuffled again, and Ian finds himself with Mercer on the left wing and Leyta in the center, while Crozier moves to the fourth line with Purcell in the center and Hollins on the right wing. It works, most of the time. 

Before last year, he never thought he would be _happy_ playing third line on an expansion team. He’s not really built for that—more of a sniper than a two-way forward—but he’ll take the third line over Pawtucket. He knows for a fact that Simmons is playing first and second line at practice in Houston; the hockey blogs have been covering the Aeros more than ever this fall, and only the most naïve of people could wonder why that is. It’s not often that the NHL gets a second coming.

Ian hates it when he gets like this, so unnecessarily bitter over something that was, ultimately, his own fault—for not playing better, for not _being_ better. He knows that he has nobody else to blame for that but himself. He knows. But still.

He shakes the feeling by the time he’s out of the showers, and he dresses methodically while the other guys file out to meet the children. Ian, though—Ian is the new kid on the block, and he can’t imagine that he has any fans in Providence already, so he doesn’t really need to leave in a rush. 

“Dude, what the fuck is taking you so long?” Aaronowitz opens the door to stick his head back in just as Ian puts his shirt on. “They’re waiting for you, get a fucking move on.”

Ian throws his flannel over his t-shirt and does the buttons up haphazardly as he hurries after Aaronowitz. 

There are kids milling all over the rec room which has been adapted for the purpose of the meeting, and the first thing Ian sees is Jack talking to a small boy in a Zimmermann jersey who can’t be older than six and looks like Christmas came early this year.

The two girls he waved at earlier come over to him before he has the chance to start feeling out of place. From up close, they look like they might be twins, and Ian crouches in front of them to get their faces on the same level. 

“Did you have fun watching the practice?” he asks, hands braced on his thighs. The girls nod. “You two play hockey, too?”

“I do,” one of the girls says. “Mindy is a figure skater.”

Ian smiles. “Figure skater, huh?” he says, and the girl—Mindy—nods solemnly. “That’s cool. Our captain’s boyfriend used to do figure skating, you know? You should go ask him about it.”

The girl beams at the two of them, and Ian turns to her sister. “What about you? What position do you play?”

“Zoe plays goalie,” Mindy says before her sister—Zoe, apparently—has a chance to answer. “She’s really good.”

Ian’s smile grows wider. “Oh, really?” he says. “Well, maybe I should come to watch one of your games sometime.”

The girl looks _delighted_ , and yeah, he can definitely see what Cory was talking about. It’s so easy, to make these kids so incredibly happy. And, hell, Ian would _definitely_ do that. Will do that, if he has the time.

“Sorry, I hope they haven’t been taking up too much of your time.” A young woman who looks like she might be their mother comes up to them and smiles apologetically. “They can be…quite a handful.”

Ian stands up. “No, no, it’s fine. They were just telling me about Zoe’s hockey games. Apparently she’s really good.”

“I’m gonna play in the NWHL when I grow up,” Zoe declares categorically, and Ian recognizes that look. He remembers himself at six, watching the Bolts win their first ever Stanley Cup and thinking, _I want to do this, too_. It’s the same determination, the same drive. 

Sometimes people say that children have no way of knowing what they really want, but for kids like them, that’s never been the case.

“Good luck,” he says, and crouches back down to give her and her sister a high-five. “You’re gonna do great.”

They leave soon after that, and when Cory finds him some time later, he throws his arm around Ian’s shoulders and grins. “Makes your heart grow, like, three fucking sizes, doesn’t it?”

Ian smiles back. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it does.”

.

For their preseason they’re playing two back-to-back games at home, then two more on the road, then fly to Providence for another back-to-back.

Ian almost throws up his pre-game meal as soon as he finally forces it down. His hands are clammy and he feels like he’s running a fever, and when it’s time for his nap, he tosses and turns more than he actually sleeps. 

Cory is driving them to the arena, thank god, because Ian isn’t sure he could trust himself behind the wheel right now, and Holster pats them both on the shoulder as they leave, already up from his own pre-game nap. The Eagles are playing the Marlies tonight, but the game doesn’t start until seven thirty.

“Fuck them up real good on my behalf, yeah?” he says before closing the door behind them. 

“Jitters?” Cory asks, glancing sideways at Ian as he stops at an intersection. 

Ian shrugs. “Yeah, I guess,” he says. 

Cory just nods. “Like, I would get the worst jitters before our games last season,” he says. “Even in preseason, which, who really counts that, right? But it was like I was supposed to live up to people’s expectations and everything, and it was just really scary, so, y’know, I get it, is all I’m saying. But we’re a _team_ , and we take that shit seriously around here. It’s never just one person’s fault, when we lose. But it took me a while to get that, so, yeah. Just…don’t sweat it, okay? If anything happens. You win some, you lose some. Not that we’re not gonna kick their fucking asses tonight or anything, but still.”

Ian almost smiles at that, because he knows Cory means well, but he also went third overall last year, and he didn’t leave the juniors with a disaster of a season behind him and a career almost ruined before it even started for real.

“Okay,” he says despite all that, because it’s nice that Cory cares. 

Cory is silent for a moment, humming along to the music—something happy and upbeat that sounds familiar even though Ian can’t remember the title. Then he asks, “Your folks coming to any of our games?”

“Maybe,” he says after a short pause, picking at his cuticles—another nervous habit he hasn’t quite managed to shake. “I mean, it’s like a five-hour drive, so they’d have to take time off work, or come on the weekend, and it’s, you know. And my brothers wouldn’t probably be able to come, unless they get a few days’ leave.”

Cory looks over from his seat as they stop at an intersection and grabs the paper coffee cup from the holder, takes a drink.

“Military?” he asks.

Ian nods. “Yeah, two of them. One’s Air Force, the other one’s a Marine. The third one works on a fishing boat.”

“So you’re, like, the baby of the family?” Cory asks, then moves to high-five Ian when he nods. “Hell yeah, me too. Two older sisters, but I guess you already knew that.”

Ian wonders if they noticed he doesn’t talk about his family much, and maybe it’s weird, maybe they think _he’s_ being weird. He knows about Holster’s three younger sisters and Cory’s sister Kathy who’s just moved to Boston with her girlfriend, and their eldest sister, Grace, who lives in California, and they—he realizes—know next to nothing about his own family.

His mother calls him twice, sometimes three times a week, to check up on him and tell him that she misses him, and he misses her, too—misses all of them—but at the same time, he’s almost ashamed to admit that it’s a relief, to be away from Searsport. 

He likes that Providence is much bigger than Searsport. He likes that not everyone here knows immediately who he is. It’s still a hockey town, though, and he knows that Jack gets recognized far more often than he would like to, knows it’s just a matter of time before people start to recognize him, too, if he sticks around long enough to get noticed in the first place.

They arrive at the arena with some time to spare, but when they enter the locker room, a few of the guys are already there, slowly getting into their gear. 

“Rookie, I’ll make you a deal,” Aaronowitz says as soon as Ian settles in his stall, and he looks up, surprised. “You don’t puke before, during or after the game, I’ll single-handedly sneak you a fucking beer when we go out after the game.”

“Hey,” Cory turns around and shoots a mock-hurt look at Aaronowitz, “I didn’t puke last year, and you didn’t buy _me_ beer, what the fuck?”

Aaronowitz just grins. “You didn’t look even half as green as Davies does, though. So what’s it gonna be, rookie? Deal or no deal?”

When Ian swallows, the inside of his mouth feels parched and disgusting, strangely bitter, but he still laughs faintly. “Okay,” he says. “Deal.”

Aaronowitz looks around the locker room, at the guys who are peeling off their clothes and putting on their Under Armour, before pointing his finger at them and adding, “And no one better fucking snitch to Zimms, you get me?”

“Snitch to me about what?” Jack asks, closing the locker room door behind him, and Schumer mouths, _Busted_ , at Aaronowitz behind Jack’s back.

“I’m corrupting the rookie,” Aaronowitz says and he’s still grinning, like the stare Jack fixes him with does nothing to him. “He gets through the game and keeps his lunch in, he gets a beer for getting through it.”

For a moment, Jack looks like he’s about to chew him out, get his captain face on and lecture Aaronowitz right in the middle of the locker room. Then he says, his voice deadpan, “So do I get that beer retroactively or what?”

Cory cracks up. “See? I told him the same thing. Fucking unfair.”

“Please, Zimms.” Aaronowitz rolls his eyes at Jack. “You were, like, barely a rookie. And you hardly ever fucking drink as it is.”

It settles Ian, strangely, this friendly locker room bickering that doesn’t really include him, but doesn’t exclude him either. He gets his space to focus before the game, but the stress of it doesn’t lock him up inside his own head either, and when they finally skate out, he shakes on the inside just a little bit.

His first shift is a series of fumbled passes from Mercer and a shot that goes way too wide, and by the time he skates back to the bench, he’s gripping his stick just a little too tight. 

“Take a deep breath,” Jack tells him, leaning in to let Ian hear him over the noise of the crowd. “Hold it in, slowly breathe out. And another. You’re doing fine. You just need to settle. It’s okay. You’re doing great.”

Jack scores three minutes later, a mean slapshot that sends the puck into the net at a breakneck speed, and Ian leans against his stick, head down as soon as the roar of the audience finally trails off and dies, and he breathes like Jack told him to. It helps, a little, to ease the tightness in his chest.

When he gets back on the ice, he takes another deep breath just as his skates hit the smooth surface of the rink, and Cory pats him on the back as he goes. 

It’s not an easy shift, and the Wings are bringing their A-game despite the fact that it’s just the preseason, but they scrape by, somehow, and when the puck hits Ian’s tape, he sends it to Mercer almost without thinking, and Mercer sinks it into the net, right between the goalie’s legs. It goes in, barely, but the refs still call goal and the buzzer goes off, and that puts them up two-nil, so it’s _something_. Assists are good, Ian tells himself. Goals are better, but he’ll take an assist over nothing.

In the end, Bergson lets one in, but Jack nets another goal, and then Cory scores as well in the last minute of regulation, and it ends 4-1 for Providence. 

They’re all giddy with it, the first game, the first win of the season, even if it’s not season proper yet. 

The media scrum is easier this time, even if no less terrifying, but at least they don’t go as hard on him as they did during camp. 

He calls his mom while he waits for the rest of the team; they’re supposed to go out, get a few drinks, then turn in early before the second game of their back-to-back.

She picks up after a few rings, congratulates him on the win, asks how he’s doing, the usual stuff. 

“We’re all really proud of you back home,” she says then, and the weight of those words settles back on Ian’s shoulders like it never left. Ian knows she means well, but it’s the last thing he needs to hear right now, how everyone is counting on him.

“Maybe you could come to a game sometime soon? You and dad, and Adam?” he asks instead, hopeful, but his mother sighs in that world-weary way that he knows all too well. “It’s just…you’ve only ever seen me play on tv in the juniors, because you could never come up to Rimouski during the season, and… I could get you tickets, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “You know it’s not about that, baby,” his mother says eventually. 

“Our home opener is on a Saturday,” Ian tells her, and he doesn’t even know why he’s pushing, but he thinks about how Jack’s parents are coming down from _Canada_ to watch him play, and it’s different now, when they don’t have to worry about the money so much, because Ian is making more than his parents and brothers put together, so there’s nothing really stopping them. “I’ll pay for everything, just, please, come to the game.” 

His mom is quiet for a while, and Ian is sure she’s about to say _no_ , but then she just sighs again. “I’ll talk to your dad, all right? He’s working the Saturday shift now, but maybe he’ll be able to get someone to cover for him.”

“Okay,” he says, his shoulders slumping as he leans against the wall.

He’ll take it.

.

They go out, in the end, and Aaronowitz _does_ sneak Ian a beer—it turns out to be easier than Ian expected, since they go to the usual place where the staff know them and tend to turn a blind eye, apparently, as long as they don’t go overboard with it. 

So Ian gets his beer, and he’s not much of a drinker, social or otherwise, so he nurses it throughout the evening, until it goes completely flat and disgusting, then switches to cranberry juice. 

The fans seem to know that the team hangs out at this bar after games, and they get approached a lot, by guys and girls in equal measure. Some of the girls flirt a lot, and Ian notices a few guys who try to be inconspicuous with their not quite subtle glances, but he gets why they don’t come closer, why they don’t say anything. As far as they know—hell, as far as Ian knows—it’s only Jack, and everyone who follows hockey knows that Jack Zimmermann has a boyfriend.

At some point, Ian grabs his jacket and goes outside for a moment to get some air. When he checks his phone, he has a missed call from Yannick. 

To: **Yannick**  
_u up?_   
(11:35 pm)

When he doesn’t get a message or a call in return, he just assumes that Yannick is already asleep—the Leafs played the Habs today, and Ian can only imagine how well that must’ve gone, regardless of the actual score, so he gets why Yannick would turn in early for the night. 

“Hey,” someone says from behind him, and when Ian turns around, there’s a pretty dark-haired girl leaning against the wall with her arm. “You’re with the Falcs, right? Hi, I’m Carlie.”

“Ian,” he says, on reflex. “Hi.”

“So, Ian,” she says, smiling, “would you like to buy me a drink?”

Ian feels himself flush. “I’m not legal to drink yet,” he says, and he can feel the tips of his ears burn. “Sorry,” he adds with an awkward smile.

He expects the girl to leave, but she just laughs quietly under her breath. “Well, you must be legal to drink _something_. What with proper hydration being important and all that. So, what do you say?”

They go inside, and Ian takes a detour to leave his jacket in the booth, Carlie waving at him once she finds a place to sit at the bar. Schumer grins at Ian and gives him two thumbs up. 

He buys her a virgin mojito, sticks with cranberry juice for himself, and Carlie smiles at him sweetly while she tells him all about her major in History, then puts a hand on his thigh. 

Ian swallows, then moves her hand away. “Sorry,” he says, and he feels like his entire face is on fire by now. “I don’t— Sorry.”

She’s really nice, and funny, and smart—that’s the worst thing, and it makes Ian feel like a real douchebag, even though he knows it’s stupid to think like that. But he tells her, “Sorry, I should probably go. It was nice to meet you,” then pays for their drinks and hightails it out of the bar. He’s two blocks down and hailing a cab when he realizes he left his jacket back at the pub.

He decides, fuck it, he’s not going back there, he’ll just ask Cory to pick it up for him, when Schumer texts him, _dude, did u just bail?_

It all clicks for him in that moment.

_did you ask her to come on to me?_ , he sends back. There’s no answer for a moment, then his phone chimes with the incoming message. 

_i just told her u got ur first point in an nhl game 2day_ , Schumer writes, and then another message comes in. It reads, _did u not like her or sth?_

Ian liked her just fine, that’s the thing. She was nice and funny, and pretty, he guesses, and she was nice to talk to, but he didn’t really want to go and do anything else with her. 

It was something the guys in the Q always teased him about—the way he never picked up, never hooked up on the road or at home. 

Yannick was the only one who didn’t give him shit about that, after that first time when he brought over two girls at some party and then went upstairs with one of them while Ian stayed downstairs with the other one. They talked for a while, and then the girl said she wasn’t really looking to hook up either, so they just finished their drinks and went their separate ways. Yannick came down after some time, flushed and ruffled, and smelling distractingly like sex, took one look at Ian and never tried to get him to hook up ever again.

_sorry, wasn’t in the mood_ , Ian sends back, hoping that this will pacify Schumer into not pressing the issue.

Once it looks like Schumer has decided to give it a rest, Ian texts Cory. 

_could you grab my jacket on your way out? i’m in a cab and just realized i left it at the bar_ , he writes.

The reply comes just as they park at the curb: _ye, no prob. c u at home?_

Ian hands the driver a few crumpled bills and quickly taps out, _yeah, i just got in, might crash right away though. thanks_ , as he gets out.

Back at the apartment, he takes a quick shower and eats a granola bar with a cup of plain yoghurt, then goes straight to bed. 

It’s nights like these when he misses Yannick the most. It’s never been easy for him to make friends, too shy as a kid and too self-conscious as a teenager, but what he had with Yannick was the easiest thing in the world. They would just hang out at one of their billet families’ places, or go to the park together to fuck around on the playground when there were no kids in sight, and Ian would sometimes get that urge to ruffle Yannick’s hair or press their foreheads together and just _smile_. His last year in Rimouski, he didn’t do a whole lot of smiling, but Yannick somehow could always make him laugh.

_miss u, buddy_ , he sends, but he knows there will be no answer until tomorrow. Still, it’s the truth.

.

“Dude, I need you to do me a solid,” Cory says the next day on their way over to practice. 

Ian looks up from where he’s been trying to beat his high score in Candy Crush for the past ten minutes. 

“Yeah?”

“So, Dani has, like, a thing,” Cory says. “The Saturday after our last preseason game. Some friend of the family or something has a daughter who’s a freshman at Brown, and Dani’s mom asked her to show her around or whatever. And it’s the girl’s birthday, I think, so Dani thought she could take her and a couple of her friends out to dinner, and she asked me to come, too, and I won’t know anyone there, so, basically, I need you to third-wheel this thing. Y’know, in a nice way.”

It’s all rapid-fire, the way Cory always gets when he’s particularly worked up about something, and Ian mulls it over for a moment, trying to untangle the familial connections here. 

“Okay?” he says eventually, still not entirely sure why Cory needs him to come.

“Cool,” Cory says, and he flashes Ian a smile. “I mean, if you don’t want to, no pressure, but it’d be nice to know more than one person there, y’know? And they’re all artists or something, and that’s not really my thing, so I’ll need backup, just in case. I’d ask Jack, but I know Bitty is coming up that weekend, so he’s gonna be busy. And we’re going to some Korean barbecue place that Dani swears is fucking baller, so, you know. You should come, see the sights and all that.”

He thinks about it for a moment; on the one hand, there’s the perspective of spending an evening with a bunch of people he doesn’t know at all, which could be a disaster, depending on whether they follow hockey or not, but on the other hand, Cory and Dani are going to be there, too, and if he doesn’t like it, he can always claim post-game fatigue and go home early.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “I’ll go.”

Cory gives him a quick fistbump.

.

They win their second game at home, then lose one on the road. The second goes to overtime and then a shootout, and ends 1-0 for the Falcs after Jack sinks a smooth wrister right into the Devils’ net.

They don’t even have time to properly catch their breath before they’re herded back to the bus and then straight to the airport to catch their red-eye. 

Cory sits with Jack in the back of the bus, like they always do, and Ian plops down next to Crozier two rows ahead. 

He’s rooming with Cory on the road, since Jack got a single this season—captain privileges—and it’s almost like home, except there’s no wall separating their beds. It’s nice. Comfortable. _Familiar_. 

Cory is a good roommate in general, not only on the road—doesn’t snore, doesn’t keep Ian up late at night, doesn’t leave wet towels all over the floor, and Ian is really happy that he decided to go for it when Cory offered him a place to stay during the season. 

In the juniors, he roomed with Yannick, who made the away games bearable, curling up next to Ian on one of their beds in the evenings and watching stupid sitcoms until one of them fell asleep, drooling on the other’s shoulder. Back on his old team in Maine, though, his roommate was Tyler Bukowsky, who was a snorer and a slob, shuffled around the team until they got to Ian, who just gritted his teeth and ignored him instead of whining to the coaches.

It’s not like he wasn’t quite used to dealing with that, with three older brothers around the house.

Sometimes Ian wonders how come Crozier is best buddies with Schumer, who literally doesn’t shut up most of the time, because Crozier is generally pretty quiet in a way that doesn’t read shy, just confident. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what it is—they complement each other rather than clash.

In Ian’s admittedly limited experience, Crozier usually just reads on the bus, or listens to some music on his iPod; tonight, though, he just sits with his eyes closed but not sleeping. Then, after a little while, he half-turns to Ian and says, “Shit, I’m gonna miss this when they send me down.”

Ian just nods in acknowledgment, then licks his lips and swallows. “So…how _is_ Pawtucket?”

He has no illusions—he knows that his place on the roster is not a sure thing, that he might still get sent down before the season starts if he doesn’t produce, might get sent down during the season if he can’t keep up. 

The Eagles are a decent team, as far as the AHL goes; they’re definitely not scraping the bottom of the barrel, but they’re not winning the Calder Cup any time soon, and Ian would rather try to pull his weight on the third line on a team that is a Stanley Cup contender than be the best player on a mediocre team in a minor league.

“It’s, you know,” Crozier says, shrugging. “The team is fine, the guys are good dudes all around, but it’s not the NHL, yeah? And that’s, like, the dream.”

Ian nods. 

“What,” Crozier says then, and he sounds half-surprised, like he’s finally figured something out right at that moment, “you think they’re gonna send you down?”

Ian shrugs, licks his lips again, like it’s a nervous habit. “I mean, who knows, right? The season hasn’t even started yet,” he says. “A lot of things can happen.”

They both know it’s true—they’d be stupid not to, and neither of them has the guarantee they’re going to stay here, not like Jack, who renegotiated his contract over the summer to include a no-move, no-trade clause. And it’s not like even that can’t be waived if an organization _really_ wants to move a player, so, in a way, nothing is ever certain for any of them. 

They board the plane around midnight, and Ian once again takes a seat next to Crozier, who’s been mostly quiet since their short conversation on the bus. Ian doesn’t mind it, prefers it, even, finally winding down enough to sleep, exhaustion catching up to him. 

He dozes off for most of the flight, waking up only once they start landing and the seatbelt sign blinks on. 

He feels groggy more than anything else, goes through the motions at the airport and splits the cab fare with Cory, nodding off again on the way back to their apartment.

“Dude, we’re here,” Cory says after a while, gently shaking Ian’s shoulder. “C’mon, grab your stuff, our beds are waiting for us.”

He goes, more instinct than anything else, and doesn’t even properly untie his shoes before he kicks them off and goes straight for his bed, falling face-first into the mattress. 

He’s setting the alarm for six-thirty—a concession on his part, because he just can’t be fucked to get up at five, considering the hour—when he notices a text he must’ve missed once he turned airplane mode off.

From: **Yannick**  
_good game :)_   
(11:55 pm)

He smiles, taps out, _thx_ , and falls asleep.

.

The first game of their second back-to-back at home is a shutout for Bergson, and they pulverize the Oilers in a 7-0 blowout, but Ian plays like _shit_ , racking up stupid icing penalties and getting increasingly frustrated when his passes don’t connect. 

“Calm the fuck down, Davies,” Mark says halfway through the second period, after Ian’s line has just finished a shift that ended with a five-on-four for the Oilers after Ian took two minutes for clipping like the fucking idiot he is. He didn’t even fucking mean to do it, didn’t even see the Oilers’ D-man coming up from behind him.

“Yeah, calm the fuck down, Davies,” Beck yells snidely from the Oilers’ bench, and Christiansen catches Ian’s forearm like he’s afraid Ian is gonna head over to punch Beck in what’s left of his teeth.

“I’m not gonna do anything,” he says to Christiansen over the noise of the audience. “You can let go.”

The Oilers are in a foul mood, and Ian can’t exactly blame them when they’re trailing five behind, but he’s not doing much better at the moment. 

When it’s time for Ian’s line to skate out for their shift, Mark just shakes his head. 

“Sit this one out, son,” he says. “Crozier, you’re up.”

He doesn’t get any more ice time until the clock runs out. He’s the first one in the locker room and first one in the showers. 

He wants to bail before they let the beats in, but he doesn’t make it in time, and they grill him for solid fifteen minutes while he tries to answer their questions with a stony face, his hands shaking when he shoves them into the pockets of his jeans. He knows he’s probably going to get shit for that, too, because it might look disrespectful to the outside eye, but he can’t let them know he’s on the verge of tears. 

His entire throat feels tight. 

They finally let him go once Jack comes out of the shower, still undressed and dripping water, and they congratulate him on his first pre-season hat-trick, leaving Ian to get his bags, get his bearings and get out. 

The worst thing is, he carpooled to the arena with Cory; technically, he could hail a cab and text Cory to let him know he’s headed home, but he feels like it would be kind of a dick move, so he just gets down to the underground parking lot and waits for him there, leaning against the hood of the car.

He’s been there for about ten minutes when his phone starts ringing. It’s Brian.

For a moment, Ian considers just ignoring it until it stops. Then he picks up. 

“Hey, bro,” Brian says as soon as the call connects. “Doing good? Congrats on the game, I caught some of it on a stream, but the wifi on the base is _shit_.”

“Thanks,” Ian says, by rote. “I…it was rough.”

“Yeah, what happened there?” Brian asks. He used to play hockey as a kid, but he never made it to a major junior team, went undrafted and didn’t get in on a tryout, then stopped playing altogether, enlisted at eighteen. “Your stick-handling was all over the place, and then those penalties…”

Ian swallows. “Yeah. It’s good that the rest of the guys came through. I mean, we got a shutout. And Jack scored a hatty.”

Brian is quiet for a moment.

“Yeah, what was that all about?” he asks then, and there’s a joking edge to his voice, but Ian knows where this is probably going. “You can’t let Zimmermann upstage you like that.”

Brian pretends to be teasing, but Ian knows it’s just a handy get out of jail free card that he can play if he gets called on it.

Ian sighs. “He’s a good player,” he says in a low voice.

“But he’s, y’know—”

“He’s my _captain_ , and a good player,” Ian says with emphasis before Brian can say anything else. “He’s not _upstaging_ me. I still have a lot to learn. And I could learn a lot from _him_.”

“Okay, okay, whatever you say.” 

If Brian is trying to placate him, that means mom talked to him and told him to play nice. Ian drops it, too, mostly because he can’t find it in himself to argue. Not tonight. Not after the day he’s had. 

They talk only about safe things after that—Brian’s promotion to staff sergeant, his wife, his two kids. The twins have just started kindergarten. It’s sort of nice, and it lasts for a while, and Ian drops his guard.

“You know, you should probably help out mom and dad more,” Brian says then. “I know dad’s been saying all sorts of things about that lately, and you know mom would never say anything to you directly, but, dude, you gotta do something about it.”

“I…what?” Ian says, confused. 

Brian falls quiet for a moment, and the silence feels uncomfortable, like he’s bracing himself for whatever it is that he has to say. 

“You know they’re still paying off their loans from when you were playing in the juniors,” he says eventually.

The only thing Ian can manage for the longest while is stunned silence.

“Brian,” he says then, forcing the words out, “I sent them a third of my paycheck. It’s six figures.”

There’s a brief pause, and Ian can hear as Brian clears his throat once, twice.

“Maybe, uh, maybe dad forgot. You know how he gets sometimes.” Dad’s always been Brian’s favorite. The feeling is entirely mutual. “And they wouldn’t ask if they didn’t really need it, I mean, you know they would never do that, right? They just _wouldn’t_.” 

“No, no, I know,” Ian assures him hastily. The thing is, he knows that Brian is right, that their parents would never abuse their trust like that. So maybe dad really did forget about the check, or something else happened that made him say these things. “Listen,” he says then, looking around the parking lot, “I gotta go, my roommate is here and we’re going home. I’ll call you, yeah?”

Cory does come down five minutes later, hair still damp from the shower. 

“Dude, you okay?” he asks as he unlocks the car and dumps his hockey back on the backseat. 

Ian shakes off everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m fine.”

“Sorry it took so fucking long, by the way,” Cory says, then reaches for his seatbelt with one hand and sticks the key in the ignition with the other. “The beats were taking their sweet time. Jack is still answering questions, I shit you not.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, just to fill the silence. “They’ve been out for blood today, I guess. Don’t even know why.”

Cory laughs quietly. “They can’t wait for the season to start. Want to see us sweat a little before it does.” He pauses for a moment, then asks, “You sure you don’t want to go out? Some guys are hitting a bar to celebrate.”

Ian just shakes his head.

There’s a line, he guesses—a line that marks how much he can take before he can’t do it anymore, and there were days, back in the juniors, when he knew he was toeing dangerously close to that line. This is what it feels like right now. 

It’s different from the tight feeling in his chest that he gets sometimes, different from the way he jitters and shakes, his heart going a mile a minute. It’s weary, and bone-deep, and exhausting. He just wants to go home.

“Not tonight.” He gives Cory a weak smile. “Sorry.”

“No, I get you,” Cory says as he puts the car in drive. “I’m fucking beat, too. The guys are just gonna have to deal.”

And this—this part is easy, simple. Ian nods, looks out through the passenger window. Doesn’t need to do anything else than just be.

.

He calls his mother the next day. He braces himself for it for the longest time over breakfast, and it must show on his face, because Holster asks, “Dude, you okay?”

Ian just nods, tells Holster that he’s fine, but it gnaws at him. He doesn’t want to be the ungrateful son who doesn’t support his parents enough when they’re the ones who made his career happen, who sacrificed a lot to get him where he is now. He feels like he disappointed them enough over the last year, no need to add to that.

He finally calls her once Holster leaves for practice; Cory is still out on his morning run, and Ian has the apartment to himself for a little while. That’s good. He doesn’t need other people to hear about his family’s financial problems.

The phone rings and rings, and rings, when in reality it takes his mother all of fifteen seconds to pick up.

“Sweetie?” she says, and she sounds out of breath, like she had to hurry to get to the phone. “Everything okay? I thought you’d be at practice by now.”

Ian swallows.

“Hi, mom. I’m going to practice in an hour. We have a game tonight, so the morning skate is shorter,” he says, then takes a deep breath, and another, steels himself for what he has to say. “I talked to Brian yesterday. He said, uh…he said that there was something wrong with the money I sent? Dad said—”

“Oh, sweetheart,” his mom says, then pauses for a long moment. “Don’t listen to everything your father says. It’s— I’m sorry you had to listen to this.” She sounds embarrassed more than anything. Ian just feels like an asshole. “You know how he gets sometimes, says all these things he doesn’t really mean… You’ve done more than enough.”

It sure as hell didn’t sound like it, if what Brian said is anything to go by.

“But the loans—” Ian starts, but his mother interrupts him again.

“We’re managing that, really.” There’s a deep sigh on the other end of the line, and she sounds tired, exhausted even, like it’s not the first time she’s having this arguments. “You already sent far too much, and what your dad said… He didn’t really mean anything by it. He misses you—we all miss you—and he’s just…you know how he is.”

Ian does know, is the thing. He knows his father loves all of them, in his own way, but sometimes it’s just difficult to get through to him, and he’s very set in his opinions.

“Are you sure?” Ian asks after a short moment of silence.

“Yes, honey, I’m sure.” His mother sighs again, weary. “And I’ll talk to your dad about this.”

Ian picks at his cuticles for a little while, until the skin around his thumbnail starts to feel jagged and raw.

“You’re still coming to the game, though, right?” he asks, and he hates that he sounds like he’s all of fifteen years old, his voice small. 

“Yes, sweetheart,” his mom says. “We’re still coming to the game.”

He exhales, relieved.

“Good,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”

.

They win in regulation against the Caps in their second back-to-back, but it’s a close game, played point for point until the very last seconds, and they skate off feeling every minute of it deep in their bones. 

Ian stays in the showers for close to twenty minutes, just letting the hot spray beat down against his screaming muscles, then goes straight for a massage, gets to lie face-down for half an hour while the team professionals work on getting him back to functional. He’s not the only one—Bergson comes in right behind him, and Jack is not far behind.

“Good game today,” Jack says before lying down on the table. 

Ian smiles even though Jack can’t see him. “Thanks. You, too.”

The thing is, it _was_ a good game, a vast improvement over yesterday’s clusterfuck that got him benched for more than half of the game, and Ian is happy about that, but he knows what the reporters say—that his play is shaky, uneven, that he can’t be depended on. 

“Hey, Zimms, I saw your better half in the management box,” Bergson says then, and when Ian turns his head to the side, he can see a small smile on appear Jack’s face before he ducks his head down like he’s almost embarrassed by how fond he is of that boy. “He staying the weekend?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I won’t be able to go to their season opener next week, so, you know.”

“Well, shit, that’s a bummer,” Bergson says, and Jack hums in agreement. “The fuck are you doing, though, that you can’t go? We’re not playing next week.”

“There’s some charity thing I agreed to way before the specific game dates for the ECAC were posted, so.” Jack shrugs. “It is what it is, eh?”

It must suck, Ian thinks, to be doing this long-distance, even if the distance itself isn’t _that_ long. 

“Yo, rookie, you got any plans for the weekend?” Bergson says, then groans as the masseuse hits a particularly rough spot. 

Ian rolls his head from side to side.

“Yeah, I’m going to a thing with Cory and Dani.”

Bergson laughs. “What, like a date?”

Ian feels happy enough with the win and loose enough in the shoulders that he dares to flip Bergson off. “Fuck off, Benny, you’re not funny,” he says. 

“Oooh, rookie’s got claws.” Bergson laughs, but it feels more good-natured than mean.

“Fuck off, Benny, you’re not funny,” Jack deadpans from his position on the massage table, face down, but when Ian looks up, he’s still giving Bergson the finger.

Ian cracks up.

.

He has no idea how to dress for the dinner, because he doesn’t think it’s going to be very fancy, but it doesn’t sound totally casual either, so he settles for a white t-shirt and a soft navy cardigan that Yannick told him to buy when they hit up Quebec City one weekend right before the end of the season.

“Yo, you ready?” Cory raps his knuckles against the door, which has been left ajar, then sticks his head in. “Dani messaged me that they’re on their way to the restaurant, so we should probably get going.”

Ian combs his fingers through his hair, then briefly looks in the mirror. It’s not like he’s trying to impress anyone or whatever.

“Yeah, I’m good to go,” he says. “Let me just grab my wallet.”

The place itself seems to be pretty busy, but there’s a big empty table by the window, and the server is about to bring them over to be seated when Dani walks in with a girl who must be her cousin—family friend, whatever.

“Hey, you made it,” Dani says as she steps up on her tiptoes to press her lips briefly to the corner of Cory’s mouth, then moves to hug Ian. She looks lovely; Cory is a lucky, lucky guy. “Guys, this is Priya.” 

They say hello and finally move over to the table which seems far too big for just the four of them, but then Ian remembers—right, Priya’s friends from school are coming, too.

“The guys should be here any minute now, and Cailin texted that she’d be late and not to wait for her,” Priya says as they sit down, Ian and Cory squeezed into the far corner. 

“You don’t have to be scared, guys.” Dani elbows Cory in the side, laughing quietly. “It’s not going to rub off on you. You know, _the art_.”

Before they have the chance to say anything in response, there’s some commotion at the front door and then three guys and a girl approach the table, hugging Priya before they say hello to the rest of them. 

They sit down to Ian’s left, opposite Dani and Priya. A moment later, their server brings out the hot pot.

“Oh my god, it smells so good,” Priya says as they all dig in.

Dani was right—the place does serve some delicious food.

They guy sitting next to Ian is pretty quiet at first, eating in that barely restrained way that tells Ian he’d been starving for a while before he got here. He sort reminds Ian of Yannick, looks-wise, with his curly hair and tan skin, and dark eyes. 

He has a sleeve tattoo on his right arm.

“So you work with Dani?” he asks at one point, once the hot pot is nothing but a memory and they’ve moved on to the rest of the dishes. It takes Ian a moment before he realizes the question is addressed to him.

“Uh, you could say that,” he answers, and it’s only half a lie.

“Oh, cool.” The guy smiles. “What do you do?”

The girl he came in with finally cracks up. “Dude, he plays hockey. This is Ian Davies. Sorry, man,” she adds, turning to Ian. “Providence, born and raised. My dad would disown me if I didn’t support the Falcs.”

“Oh, shit,” one of the other guys says as he leans forward to take a better look at Ian. He thinks his name is Malcolm. “I knew I recognized you from _somewhere_. Dude, congrats on the first round.” He turns to face the guy sitting next to Ian. “C’mon, Cam, keep up. You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

The guy—Cam—laughs. “I’m not even _from_ Kansas, asshole, and nobody here thinks you’re particularly funny. Sorry,” he says to Ian, “I had no idea who you were. I don’t really follow hockey.”

His friend, who has been sitting quietly so far, snorts. “Dude, you’re from _Boston_. How you managed to avoid learning _anything_ about hockey is a mystery.”

He shrugs. 

“Sorry, I don’t think I caught your name…” Ian says when the other guys go back to stuffing themselves full of delicious meat and his attention shifts back to Ian.

“Cameron,” he says. “And you’re Ian, right?”

“Ian Davies, yeah.”

“So how do you know Priya?” Cameron asks. “Or is it just through Dani?”

Ian chews for a moment and swallows before answering. “Yeah, that. I room with her boyfriend, we play together on the Falconers.” 

Cameron smiles. “That must be really cool.”

Ian just shrugs.

“It’s honestly not a big deal.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Malcolm chimes in, then gestures to Ian with his chopsticks. “This dude here went first round in this year’s draft. And Cory Smith over there plays wing on the first line with _Jack Zimmermann_.”

There’s a moment of consideration on Cameron’s part, like he’s trying to rack his brain for something. “Oh, wait,” he says eventually. “I think I’ve heard of him. Didn’t he come out earlier this year?”

“Well, that’s one word for it,” Malcolm says. “But yeah, he’s out.”

Ian excuses himself a moment later and goes outside to get some air. So much for anonymity, he guesses, and who knew art students would be so into hockey. 

There’s a biting chill in the air, but Ian doesn’t mind; the way his breath curls into white mist is familiar and soothing, and the way the cold bites into his skin is no different from any of the times he’s stepped onto the ice.

He realizes he’s been out for too long when the door opens and Cameron steps outside, then leans against the wall with his shoulder and fishes a pack of smokes out of his pocket. 

“It’s a nasty habit,” he says as he lights a cigarette, then offers one to Ian, who just shakes his head. “And I don’t even smoke regularly, y’know? But sometimes I think I should just stop altogether.”

“Yeah,” Ian says absentmindedly. 

“Hey, man, you okay?” Cameron asks after a moment, looking at Ian out of the corner of his eyes.

“I’m not very good with crowds,” he admits reluctantly once the silence between them stretches for too long. “Needed to get some air.”

Cameron whistles. “That must suck for a pro hockey player.”

Ian laughs, and it’s not even bitter, the way he expected it to come out. But there’s really no judgment in Cameron’s words, the tone of his voice, just a simple acknowledgment of the fact. 

“Yeah, you could say that.” Ian pauses for a moment and shakes his head with amusement. Then, completely on impulse, he adds, “You should come watch us play. Practice is sometimes open to the public. I mean, if you’re even interested in that kind of thing. You did say you didn’t really follow hockey.”

Cameron takes a drag of his cigarette and exhales the smoke up into the air, away from Ian. 

“I played varsity lacrosse in high school,” he says, “but didn’t really bother trying out for the Bears, y’know? It’s not like I was gonna make career out of it anyway, unlike _some_ people. But yeah, okay, why not. Maybe then Mal and Dan are gonna stop making fun of me for not knowing anything about hockey.”

Ian smiles, the knot in his chest slowly dissolving.

“But really,” he teases, “nothing? Nothing at all? It’s _Boston_ , you can’t take five steps without running into a Bruins fan.”

This time, it’s Cameron who starts to laugh. 

“You say that like it’s a dirty word.”

Ian shrugs and puts his hands into the pockets of his cardigan. “Team rivalries are serious business,” he says. “And Providence _really_ hates Boston.”

Cameron puts the cigarette out against the top of the trashcan, then throws the butt into the trash and smiles. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

.

It doesn’t hit him until he’s back at home, peeling out of the t-shirt in a dark, empty room, how much he’s hoping Cameron actually shows up. It’s nice, to be around someone who doesn’t really care who Ian is, and what he did or didn’t do back in the juniors, who doesn’t share the same expectations and the severe sense of disappointment in Ian as a player and as a person that people who actually follow hockey tend to do.

He’s not counting on it, though, as much as he liked Cameron. 

He trained himself out of getting his hopes up a long time ago.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thank you so much for all your incredible feedback! The response to this story continues to amaze me.  
> And as always, huge thanks to lanyon for all the cheerleading and amazing support, and to Codie for the incredible beta and words of encouragement.

They skate out for the first practice of the regular season and Cory knocks into Ian almost as soon as their skates hit the ice, cocks his head to the side and points discreetly in the direction of the stands. 

“Look who’s here,” he says before putting his mouthguard in, then skates away. 

Ian doesn’t turn around immediately, but when he eventually does, he sees Cameron sitting in the second row with a friend Ian doesn’t know. 

When he waves, Cameron waves back.

Mark is in a foul mood today after a meeting with the front office, and who knows what that’s all about, but whatever it is, he doesn’t look pleased with the outcome.

“What crawled up _his_ ass and died?” Simmons asks, low enough for Mark not to hear it, as he comes to a stop in the narrow space between Ian and Crozier and leans on their shoulders, elbow knocking into the back of Ian’s head. “Think they’re gonna trade someone away before the opener?”

“Dude, what the fuck.” Aaronowitz almost brains himself with his stick from how abruptly he stops mid-turn. “Don’t even _think_ shit like this.”

October trades are, in a way, the worst of them all. Closer to the deadline, every player knows that there’s nothing certain, but in October, with the season just starting, most of them are lulled into a false sense of security—they made it through the camp, they made the roster, they’re here to stay for at least a few months.

Sometimes, though, it’s just not meant to be.

Practice is tough and grueling, but at least they’re not doing bag skates, and by the end of it, they’re exhausted but also sort of happy in a very masochistic way. Mark is not one of those coaches who bring their bad temper out onto the ice, and he’s more gruff with them than he usually lets himself be, but nobody gets chewed out for no reason and nobody gets thrown out, and Ian’s heard enough horror stories to count this one as a plus.

They’re slowly winding down after practice before they skate off to shower when Aaronowitz comes up to Ian and hip-checks him gently, then throws an arm around Ian’s shoulders and grins.

“What’s up, rookie?” he says. “Charming the pants off the entire population of Providence already, huh?”

When Ian raises his eyebrows at him, confused, Aaronowitz just grins harder and points to where Cameron and his friend are sitting, talking to each other. 

“He’s not…” he starts, but realizes he has no idea how to end this sentence. “He’s a friend of Dani’s. I just invited him to practice. Didn’t even think he would show.”

Aaronowitz looks at Ian for a moment, glances at Cameron and his friend for a few seconds, then looks back to Ian and shakes his head. “Oh, rookie…” He laughs. “Don’t tell anyone this, but you’re my fucking favorite.”

Ian has less than no idea what Aaronowitz is even getting at, but he laughs, too, despite himself, and shouts at his retreating back, “Don’t worry, you’re my favorite, too!”

Aaronowitz turns around on his skates and forms a heart with his hands. From across the rink, Schumer yells, “Are you cheating on me with the rookie? I thought our love was forever!”

Aaronowitz gives him the finger. “At least _I_ don’t have the hots for Jay-Z’s parents!” he yells back.

Ian laughs. Slowly, he makes his way to where Cameron and his friend have moved towards the end of practice, closer to the walkway, and he gets his gloves off as he finally reaches them, only slightly out of breath now instead of heaving. 

“Hey,” he says. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Hey,” Cameron says, then turns to his friend. “This is David. David is from Canada and actually knows shit about hockey, so I dragged him here with me.”

“I’m Ian, hi,” he says, shaking David’s hand briefly. “Nice to meet you.”

He’s sweaty and disgusting, and he probably smells, too, so it’s probably best to keep his distance until he gets the chance to shower. 

“So how did you like it?” he asks, turning to Cameron. 

“You guys are _crazy_ fast,” he says. “I have no idea how you’re even standing right now, and I did lacrosse for, like, ten years.”

The rest of the guys start to slowly leave the ice, too, and Holtzy claps Ian on the shoulder as he passes him on his way to the locker room. 

“Okay,” Ian says, “I should probably go shower, because I’m sweating bullets right now, but wait up if you want? It’s lunchtime, we could go grab a bite to eat.”

He knows it’s a little presumptuous, but then again, Cameron _did_ come to practice even though Ian never really counted on it in the first place, so maybe he won’t say no now, either.

“I gotta go, but I can just get a cab or catch a bus, don’t worry about me,” Cameron’s friend—David—says, smiling apologetically at Ian, and he half-expects Cameron to follow him out. “And have fun, maybe score me Zimmermann’s autograph or something. It was really nice to meet you, dude. Good luck with your season, but try not to beat the Sens too hard, eh?”

“Ottawa boy, huh?” Ian huffs out a laugh. “Can’t promise anything, but.” He shrugs. “Sorry.”

David says his goodbyes, congratulates Ian on a good practice and leaves the rink in a hurry, while Ian stands there, fidgeting nervously, suddenly unsure about anything. 

“Sorry, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, obviously,” he says eventually, his face burning. Ian knows the flush usually doesn’t really show, thank god, but he can feel the heat his skin gives off. “You could still probably catch your friend if you hurry up. I mean—”

Cameron shakes his head. “No, it’s okay, man,” he says. “I’m actually starving. We can totally go grab a bite. My treat.”

Ian swallows. “Okay, then. Just wait for me somewhere by the locker room entrance? They won’t let you into that part of the building without a pass, but I’ll come find you once I’m done, okay?”

Cameron smiles. “Sure. I’ll wait.”

.

Leyta finds out during the presser after practice. Ian is there when it happens, sitting just one stall over.

“How would you comment on the latest trade between Providence and Seattle?” one of the reporters asks, recorder thrust in Leyta’s face. “Are you excited to play for the Schooners?”

Leyta looks like he’s just been slapped, taken aback and suddenly pale except for the spots of bright pink rising in his cheeks.

“I…what?”

“The trade came through five minutes ago,” the beat who asked the question says. “I take it you have not been notified by the front office yet?”

Ian grits his teeth. It’s bullshit—it’s fucking _bullshit_ , the beats knew exactly that the team was still on the ice ten minutes ago, they knew exactly what bullshit sort of sensationalist trap they were setting up for Leyta. 

It sells, Ian guesses, the shell-shock, the raw hurt you can’t hide for the few seconds after they tell you.

“I…” Leyta starts, then stops. “What’s the trade?”

“You and Kinsley to Seattle for Griffin and a second round pick in two thousand seventeen,” one of the other beats says, and he at least has the decency to look and sound a little sympathetic. 

The thing is, it’s not really personal, not in most cases anyway. It’s just a business decision like many others, and the GMs are there to take care of their players, but ultimately, they’re in this business to get results, and part of that is making smart choices. And this is definitely a smart trade—Leyta is a versatile forward with some serious muscle on him who does well with the defensive aspects of the game, and Kinsley is a D-man, and if there’s one thing the Schooners desperately need, it’s more depth on the blue line. 

The Falcs are doing more than fine in that department, they can spare a few D-men in exchange for a good forward, and Griffin can be relied on to produce. It still stings.

Leyta manages to say the usual things—he’s grateful for the opportunity, he’s grateful to the Falconers’ organization for believing in him in the first place and giving him a place to call home for a few years, he will be sad to go but excited for what lies ahead. 

He’s mostly lying, like all players ambushed by an unexpected trade are.

Jack walks in after the beats have already left the locker room, dripping water from his hair. He’s greeted with almost complete silence. 

“Okay, somebody tell me what happened,” he says, looking around the room.

It’s quiet for a moment, then Schumer says, “They traded Leyta and Kinsley to the Schooners for Griffin and a draft pick.”

Ian gets out of there in a hurry.

.

Cameron is waiting for him in front of the door leading to the locker room area, hands in his pockets, leaning against the wall. 

“Hey, everything okay?” he asks as soon as he sees Ian. 

Ian swallows and shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “I’m fine.”

Cameron takes another careful look at him. 

“You don’t look particularly fine. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

Ian takes a deep breath, then another, holds the air in his lungs for a moment, then exhales. 

“We just found out two guys on the team have been traded,” he says. “To Seattle.”

It’s strange to be talking about this, the sting of it still so fresh, with someone who has never been a part of this in any way—not as a player, forced to drop everything at a moment’s notice and move across the country just to be thrown out onto the ice in the middle of an unfamiliar team with the expectations that you’re just going to make it work; not as a family member, whose choice is either to stay separated by an entire country or be uprooted in a matter of hours.

Fortunately, Leyta doesn’t have a girlfriend or any children, but Kinsley has a wife and two small kids. Those ones are always the hardest.

“Shit,” Cameron says. “Is it too early for day-drinking?”

Ian just shakes his head. “I’m not legal to drink,” he says. “Let’s just…let’s just go. Do you have a car?”

Cameron’s Audi is parked in front of the rink. It’s shiny and black, and looks brand new. 

“Let’s just take my car and then I’ll drop you off, okay?” he suggests as he reaches for the keys and unlocks the car. “What do you feel like today? Indian? Italian?”

“Something that won’t ruin my diet,” Ian says, feeling embarrassed. He’s usually pretty careful when it comes to his diet and follows his plan almost religiously, but sometimes that can be a problem with people who are not used to the limitations of a strict regimen. “Lots of protein, some carbs.”

“Okay,” Cameron says. “I know a place that does amazing fish. Sound okay?”

“Yeah, sounds great.” Ian fastens the seatbelt. “Let’s go.”

.

The place they go to is a quiet bistro in some part of the city Ian doesn’t know too well. It’s not too crowded, but most of the tables are occupied, and it feels at the same time busy and strangely cozy. 

The server leads them to a nice table at the back of the room, and once they sit down, Ian has to physically stop himself from reaching for his phone to check what the general reaction to the trade has been. The news broke a while ago, so there are probably some pieces already up on the hockey blogs, and Twitter must be blowing up. He has no idea if they interviewed Kinsley, too, or what he said, since his stall is—was—on the other side of the locker room, and Ian left before the beats finished talking to Leyta. 

Ian probably should message the two of them, tell them he’s sorry to see them go. 

“Does that sort of thing happen often?” Cameron asks, and Ian looks up guiltily from where his finger keeps tracing the phone screen, one tap away from unlocking it. “Spur of the moment trades, I mean.”

Ian curls his hand into a fist, flexing his fingers. 

“Sometimes,” he says. “Trades happen mostly in the off-season or closer to the trade deadline, but it’s not like there’s a rule for that. And players get traded all the time, but you’re never _really_ prepared for that when it happens.”

Cameron nods thoughtfully. “Must be rough,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s…” Ian pauses, not sure how to continue. “Yeah.”

Their server comes by to take their orders—Ian chooses a sea bass dish with polenta and asparagus that he guesses is healthy enough while Cameron opts for salmon—and after they get their drinks, they’re once again left alone to talk.

“So when does your season start?” Cameron asks, leaning back in his chair. “It’s pretty soon, right?”

“Yeah, this Saturday, actually. We’re playing our season opener at home, against the Aces,” Ian says. “They won the Cup last year.”

He tries not to think about that—the fact that they’re playing against the Aces so early in the season; the fact that Kent Parson will be just on the other side of the face-off dot, no longer an abstract point of comparison for the hockey pundits to measure Ian’s worth against. He knows what they’ve been saying, he’s seen the long posts on hockey blogs comparing his junior stats with Parson’s, like there was something to divine from those in the first place, because if there’s one thing hockey loves, it’s a good narrative, and legacy always sells.

“Maybe I should come watch the game, then,” Cameron says with a smile. “Sounds like there’s a lot of potential for excitement. You know, playing against the defending champions and all that.”

Ian swallows. Intellectually, he knows the Falconers have it in them to win against the Aces—they went two-nil against them last season—but if he plays like shit again, he doesn’t want to have Cameron right there to see it live in excruciating detail.

“I don’t think there are too many tickets left, if any,” he says, “but if you want to come watch us play and don’t manage to get tickets for Saturday, we’re, uh, playing the Leafs on Sunday? I mean, the players always get some tickets put aside for each game, but my family is coming down, so, um, I might not be able to get any more. But I could try, if you really want to come to the opener?”

Cameron ducks his head and laughs quietly, his curls falling over his face. “No worries, I’ll see what I can get, and if that doesn’t pan out, I’ll call you? And Sunday is fine, really, if I don’t manage to get anything for Saturday. Don’t sweat it. But that also reminds me: we should probably swap numbers. I mean, if you want.”

There’s a tiny part of Ian that makes him wonder if Cameron is just humoring him—after all, his friends said he had no interest in hockey, and yet here he is now, trying to score last-minute tickets to their season opener. It’s the same part of Ian that always made him wonder if people were just pretending to like him, that made it so hard for him to get close to anyone in the first place. There was even a short period of time—as impossible as it may seem now—when Ian convinced himself that Yannick was just humoring him, too.

But Cameron came to practice today because he wanted to, didn’t he? And then he offered to take Ian out to lunch, and now he’s sitting across from Ian, smiling at him with a smile that reaches his eyes, all warm and comfortable, so maybe if he _didn’t_ want to do any of these things—maybe he just wouldn’t have said anything, wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.

“Yeah, sure, let’s do that,” Ian says, handing his phone over to Cameron to let him add his number to Ian’s contacts. 

When Cameron unlocks his phone and hands it to Ian across the table as well, Ian quickly taps out the digits and saves it under _Ian Davies_ , just in case Cameron knows someone else named Ian.

“I, uh…thanks for coming out today, by the way. I didn’t think you’d show,” he admits in a sudden rush of painful honesty, feels the tips of his ears burn with embarrassment. 

Cameron stares at him for a short moment, a flash of confusion on his face. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks. “Come on, I had a good time, it’s not like you put me out by inviting me to an _NHL hockey practice_. David was pretty stoked, too. And probably a little jealous. He could never get me to watch hockey with him back when we were together.”

Ian feels his stomach drop, and the worst thing is, he doesn’t even know _why_. 

His mouth feels like cotton.

“Oh,” he says uselessly, reaching for his drink. “That’s nice…y’know, that you’re still friends,” he forces out.

Cameron shrugs, the corners of his lips turning up slightly. “Well, we’ve always been friends first, everything else second.”

Ian nods, smiles. His heart is pounding in his chest like he’s just run five miles, and he excuses himself to use the washroom a moment later, leaving Cameron alone at the table.

He almost envies Cameron the ease with which he said it, like it was just an afterthought—Ian doesn’t think he could do that in his place, always too careful not to show people how to hurt him, always showing too much anyway. He can’t even explain why he’s thinking about this now; it’s not like any of this concerns him—he’s not Jack, he’s not Parson, he’s not any of those unnamed, anonymous players across the league who keep their mouth shut and get on with their lives or go under trying. 

And yet. 

He comes back to the table after a while and gives Cameron a small smile as he sits down. 

“All good?” Cameron asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ian says, and that’s one-half truth, one-half lie. “Sorry, I think I’m getting a headache.”

Their food arrives a moment later and Ian has to admit Cameron was right about the amazing fish. The full force of his hunger hits him once he’s about one-third done with the meal, and he feels like he could probably put away another plate just like this one.

He admits that out loud, and Cameron laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

“Hockey player metabolism, huh?”

Ian laughs quietly, then takes a drink of water. “Yeah, we tend to eat a lot.” He pauses for a moment, then adds mournfully, “I could never put on a lot of muscle. I know I’m gonna always be on the smaller side for a hockey player, but, y’know, it helps. Especially later in the season, because you lose a lot of weight over time. But I could never bulk up a lot, no matter how much time I spent at the gym. Works for Kent Parson, though, so if it’s good enough for him…”

“That some other famous hockey player?” Cameron asks, playing with his napkin absentmindedly.

“Yeah.” Ian swallows. “He’s the captain of the Las Vegas Aces. One of the best players in history. He used to play with Jack.”

Cameron looks up, surprised. “Zimmermann?”

“Yeah,” Ian explains, “they played together in the juniors. They were unstoppable.”

Cameron hums thoughtfully. “So what happened?”

Ian tells him the story—or at least the relevant parts of it—because it’s not like it isn’t there, plastered all over the internet for the entire world to see. And if he hears it from Ian, he can avoid reading the lies and the speculations, and the tasteless commentary on Jack’s most painful and private moments that were aired by the hockey press like dirty laundry.

“Shit,” Cameron says once Ian is done talking. “Must’ve been rough for him.”

“Yeah,” Ian says, and thinks of all those times he found himself shaking uncontrollably in a locked hotel bathroom in the middle of the night, teeth chattering, with Yannick sleeping on the other side of the door. “Yeah, it must’ve been.”

.

Cameron gives him a ride back to the rink once they’re done with lunch. Ian is quiet in the passenger seat, looking out the window as Providence passes him by. 

He likes the city—it’s so much bigger than home, but it’s not large, like New York or LA, and he doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the hectic rhythm big cities tend to have, just pleasantly anonymous. 

When they arrive back at the rink, Ian doesn’t immediately get out of the car. Instead, he awkwardly sits in silence for a moment, torn between saying something really stupid and saying nothing at all. Finally, he licks his lips nervously and smiles at Cameron, who’s looking at him with curiosity. 

“Thanks,” Ian says. “I had a really nice time.”

He can see Cameron make an aborted gesture, and then he shakes his head with a quiet huff of breath, like he’s laughing at himself, before finally meeting Ian’s eyes again. 

“Yeah, me too,” Cameron says. “Thanks for teaching me things about hockey. I think I should maybe call David, rub it in a little.”

Ian laughs quietly. “Well, if you ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

“Oh, I’m totally gonna annoy the shit out of him for, like, the next two weeks at least, and I’m definitely enlisting you to help with that.”

They’re both still smiling as they say goodbye, and Ian slowly walks over to where his car is parked, unlocks it and sits completely still behind the wheel for a long while, unsure of how to make sense of the jumble of thoughts inside his head, unsure of what he actually wants. 

He hates it when he gets like this, his mind going a mile a minute while he desperately tries to keep up. He knows better than to fight it, though, so he just sits in a deserted parking lot for a long, long time and lets it wash over him.

.

Griffin is there next morning at practice. 

When Ian gets there at half past nine, Leyta’s name is gone on the stall right next to his, which now belongs to Griffin and which is empty when he first walks into the locker room.

“So do you think that, like, they’re gonna politely ignore each other and shit?” Schumer asks Aaronowitz as Ian sets down his hockey bag and looks over his shoulder, curiosity piqued. “I mean, Griffin was out with a busted knee when we played Seattle last year, right? So they haven’t seen each other since that game in the juniors.”

“Dude, I dunno, but whatever’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be _good_ ,” Aaronowitz says. “Not that I don’t love Zimms with all my heart and shit, but the boy can definitely hold a grudge.”

Ian turns around to face them. “A grudge?” he repeats.

Schumer’s entire face lights up. “Oh, rookie,” he says, and he walks over to throw his arm around Ian’s shoulders. “Do you want to hear about the one and only time Parson dropped his gloves in, like, his entire hockey career?”

“What?” Ian squints at both of them, confused.

“Yeah,” Aaronowitz says, “they were, like, back in the juniors, and it was one of the last games before Memorial Cup, and Griffin got all up in Jack’s business and wouldn’t fucking leave him alone the entire time they were on the ice. And he must’ve pushed him or something, I don’t even know, but he knocked him into the boards, took Jack out of the game completely. So Jack had to go back to the locker room with suspected concussion that turned out to be nothing, thank fuck, and Parson went fucking _nuts_ right there on the ice, dropped his gloves and fucked Griffin up real good before the refs got to them. The guy was bleeding all over his face—I think Parser broke his nose or something, got a double major and almost got himself ejected from the game. It was fucking _unbelievable_.”

“Yeah,” Schumer adds. “I mean, Parson is a scrawny guy, all things considered, right? And sure, he’s got, like, hella abs and everything, but back in the juniors? He was still pretty small for a hockey player, and he wasn’t, like, scrappy. Never really fought on the ice or anything. So that was really out of the fucking blue. And now we’re wondering if Zimms still, y’know, holds a grudge or something.”

Ian tries to imagine that—Kent Parson, at eighteen, pummeling away at some guy with at least a few inches and about a couple dozen pounds on him until his knuckles started to bleed, because he hurt his best friend. 

He wonders, for a moment, if maybe the rumors were true, after all—but then again, he would’ve done the same thing if it’d been Yannick’s head that cracked against the glass, helmet or no helmet.

Griffin walks into the locker room about ten minutes later, followed by Jack. They’re talking to each other in quiet voices, and it seems like, whatever had happened between the two of them, they left it back in the juniors.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ian sees Schumer and Aaronowitz elbowing each other, but they don’t say anything, for once, apart from the usual, _hello, man, good to have you here_.

Griffin looks exactly like Ian thought he would—grey in the face after the red-eye flight, his eyes sunken and tired. Across the continent, Leyta and Kinsley must be looking pretty much the same.

“Hey, neighbor, nice to meet you,” he says to Ian as he finally makes his way over to his stall, and they shake hands. 

Griffin is taller than Ian, and broader in the shoulders, and when he grasps Ian’s hand, his grip is strong and sure. 

“Hi,” Ian says. “Nice to meet you, too.”

The room descends into a cacophony of noise as more and more guys slowly start to file in, but Ian notices some of them glancing back to Kinsley’s empty stall. It never gets any easier, he guesses, even once it gradually becomes routine. 

They flock out onto the ice eventually, and Mark gives Griffin a nod of acknowledgment and a smile. Then he puts Griffin on Ian’s line, moving Mercer to the center to accommodate Griffin on the left wing.

It’s a bit of a hit-or-miss at first, with Mercer coming back to playing center after a good chunk of the preseason spent on the wing, but he adjusts soon enough, and by the end of practice, they even have a semblance of a rhythm going, their passes connecting most of the time, even though Ian can see every time Griffin catches himself, wrong-footed for a fraction of a second as he looks for a teammate who isn’t there simply because he left him back in Seattle. 

As they’re heading back into the locker room, Ian skates up to Griffin and gently bumps their shoulders together. 

Griffin bumps back.

.

Two days later—and three days before their season opener—Kjellsson, their backup goalie, goes down with a groin injury, gets himself placed on long-term IR, and the Falconers call up the starting goalie from the Eagles. His name is Pascal Charron, he’s only two years older than Ian and has the most pronounced accent Ian has ever heard, both in English and in French, _joual_ thick on his tongue to the point where Ian, who’s always had good ear for languages and picked up some Quebecois while in Rimouski, can’t understand a thing. 

Jack talks to him in French a lot during the first practice he’s there, fresh from Pawtucket, looking severely overwhelmed. Ian observes from a distance, but whatever Jack says, it eventually makes Charron smile, and Jack raps his knuckles against the side of his helmet before skating away.

Ian sometimes wonders, how it is that Jack always knows how to say exactly the right thing—it’s one of those things that captains can just _do_ , he guesses, and it has a lot to do with why they’re even captains in the first place.

When he repeats that out loud to Cory as they’re taking a short break, Cory laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he looks up at Ian. 

“Jack’s a great captain, yeah,” he says, “but he’s had to work at it. It’s not all, y’know, natural talent or whatever, and it’s not, like, magic or some shit. But yeah, I guess he makes it look really easy, huh?”

Ian half-shrugs, half-nods. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

Unlike Crozier, Charron doesn’t really have any close friends on the team, so Ian sits down next to him at the team lunch. For a moment, he considers going with his slightly rusty French before he ultimately decides against it. It’s not like he’s _amazing_ at speaking Quebecois, and Charron’s accent doesn’t make it any easier for him, so it’s probably better to stick with English. 

“Hey, I’m, uh…I’m Ian,” he says as he gets comfortable in his chair. “I don’t think we really had a chance to talk during camp, but it’s nice to meet you. This your first time up in Providence?”

“Yeah,” Charron says, nodding solemnly. “Never really thought I’d be here.”

The thing is, when you’re a backup goalie, most of the time you dress for the game just to be there in case something unexpected happens, but for the most part, you don’t see a lot of ice time, unless the starting goalie suddenly starts to allow shots in left and right or gets injured mid-game. When you’re a goalie in the minors, you generally realize that you’re stuck there until one of the goalies on the team gets injured or traded away for a non-goalie player. It’s a tough pecking order, so the shock of being called up is all the more overwhelming, Ian guesses.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” he says, thinking back to the off-season, to all the doubt and anxiety, and fear. 

Charron looks up at him from his mashed potatoes and raises his eyebrows. “But didn’t you go first round this year?”

Ian has no idea how to even begin to explain this, the cold, tight knot in the middle of his chest, the way he can’t sleep sometimes, the way his entire body shakes so hard that his teeth start to chatter as he tries to hold it in. 

“Yeah, but you never know, right?” he says instead. “A lot of guys get cut.”

Charron nods and goes back to eating. On Ian’s other side, Cory leans over the table to get a better look at him. 

“You must be pretty excited, though, right?” he asks. “With how it’s the home opener and everything, and the fact that we’re playing the Aces, and that’s always so much _fun_ , y’know? Your folks coming to cheer on you? I mean, I know it’s pretty fucking short notice, but it’s, like, now or never, am I right? Go big or go home.”

Charron just shakes his head. “Nah, ‘s just my mom and my brothers. And they couldn’t really make it down.”

Ian thinks about his own parents, who are coming down on Friday evening. It makes his stomach hurt, the anticipation and the anxiety, the way he doesn’t want to disappoint them when it’s the first time they get to see him play live in almost three years. But it would hurt more, he thinks, if they couldn’t or didn’t want to come. 

“Well, you’re stuck with us for a while,” Cory says, and he leans back in his chair to bump his fist against Charron’s arm, stretching to reach him behind Ian’s back. “Might just as well make the best of it, yeah?”

In response, Charron gives them something that almost looks like a smile.

.

Cameron calls him just as Ian is getting out of the shower. 

He’s supposed to meet up with his parents and Adam for dinner at their hotel in less than an hour, and he’s still sore from his afternoon workout—lots and lots of core exercises, some cardio, some weight training. Nothing his body can’t handle, but he’s going to be feeling it for the next few hours. 

“Hey,” he says as soon as he picks up, slightly out of breath as he struggles to put underwear on. He still doesn’t know what to think of that moment in the car, doesn’t know what he even wanted or didn’t want it to mean. “Everything okay?”

“Hey yourself,” Cameron says. He has a nice voice; Ian is always worried that he sounds stupid over the phone. “Yeah, everything’s fine, but I’m just calling to let you know that unless you work some of your magic, I’m not gonna be able to make it on Saturday. There are literally no tickets left, it’s all sold out.”

It hits Ian square in the chest, the fact that he’s going to be playing his first NHL game of the regular season in front of more than eighteen thousand people at a sold-out arena in less than forty-eight hours.

“I could probably ask around the front office,” he says, cringing on the inside at the thought of doing this on the phone. He _hates_ calling people, especially on official business. “See if there are any tickets left. But—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Cameron interrupts him almost immediately. “I can do Sunday, there are still some pretty good seats left.”

Ian sits down on the bed to get his jeans on. “I can get you seats right by the glass behind the home team’s bench,” he says. “My parents can’t stay for Sunday, but I reserved those tickets just in case, so they’re yours if you want them. There’s three of them, so you can, um, bring friends if you want. You know, David or Malcolm, or Dan, or whoever. The tickets gonna be waiting for you at the front desk, just mention my name, okay?”

He gets up, phone pressed between his cheek and his shoulder, and buttons up his jeans, picks up the henley. 

“My best friend plays for the Leafs,” he adds, a propos nothing in particular, then puts Cameron on speaker as he finishes putting his clothes on. “I haven’t seen him since the draft.”

“That must be tough,” Cameron says. “Did you two use to play together?”

Ian reaches for his leather jacket and shrugs it on, then turns to look for his car keys. “Yeah, back in the Q. We played on the same line.”

He knows there’s an expiration date on most friendships from the juniors. Most of the guys realize it’s just the two years and then they’re bound to go their separate ways, scattered all over the States and Canada, some of them straight to the NHL, some of them to rough it out in the minors for a year or two, some of them to go back home or go to college when they go undrafted and don’t get in on a tryout. 

The majority of friendships don’t survive that. But Ian knows that what he and Yannick have is forever. They might be in two different countries, separated by over five hundred miles, but they will always have each other’s backs. 

The truth is—they will probably never play for the same team again. Yannick went third overall, which nobody could have predicted back when he was drafted by Rimouski as a third-round pick, a solid but otherwise unremarkable player. It was only after they’d been placed on the same line that he had grown into himself just as Ian gradually disappeared into his own shadow—the first overall pick who couldn’t quite cut it in the end.

So Yannick went third overall in the entry draft, and teams don’t trade top draft picks just because. Not when they’re supposed to be the face of the new, rebuilding franchise. No, Yannick is there to stay, and even if he does get traded, what is the probability that he’ll go to the same team that Ian is on? 

They both understand the reality of it, and it’s okay, even though it isn’t, not really. But they can deal—they have been dealing with the harsh truth of being a hockey player for a long, long time.

“I, uh,” Ian says, glancing at his wristwatch just to discover he should be getting in the car right about now, “I have to go meet my parents and my brother for dinner, they just got into town for the game, so I’ll just…I’ll talk to you later, okay? Sorry, but I really have to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, for sure,” Cameron says. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

.

He gets stuck in traffic on the way to the hotel.

Initially, his parents wanted to drive down from Maine early on Saturday, but Ian managed to convince them to come down the day before, to show them around Providence and spend some time together before the game.

They haven’t seen each other since July. 

There’s been some sort of accident further up the road, and once he realizes it’s going to take a while, he calls his mother and then, when she doesn’t pick up, tries his brother. Adam picks up after the second ring. 

“Where are you?” he asks before Ian can say anything. “We’re all waiting for you.”

Ian looks at the row of unmoving cars in front of him. “I’m stuck in traffic, sorry,” he says. “It might be a while. I’ll call the restaurant and ask them to hold our table.”

About half an hour later, the cars finally start to move. 

Ian gets to the hotel in record time just to find his parents and Adam sitting in the lobby, waiting for him. It’s a nice hotel, possibly fancier than the occasion required, but Ian is happy to make his family comfortable; after all, they did drop everything just to come watch him play.

His mom spots him first, and she gets up to hug him. Ian has no idea if it’s just the fact that they haven’t seen each other in such a long time, or if he hit the last of his growth spurt in the meantime, but she seems even smaller than he remembers, the crown of her head barely reaching his chin. Next to her, Adam and their dad look huge. 

As soon as she lets him go, Adam pulls Ian into a giant bear-hug, and he claps him on the back so hard it almost pushes all air out of Ian’s lungs.

His father just shakes his hand and pats him on the shoulder. 

“Good to see you, son,” he says. 

Ian smiles, pressing his lips together.

“We really missed you, baby, and we’re so proud of you,” his mom says quietly as they get into Ian’s car, and she puts her hand on his forearm, squeezing gently. She looks tired. 

“It’s nice that you could come watch me play,” he says, turning the key in the ignition. “Jack’s parents are flying down from Montreal.”

When he glances to the side, to the passenger seat, his father’s face is impossible to decipher. He doesn’t look displeased, exactly, but he doesn’t look happy either. 

“Well, they can certainly afford it,” he says eventually, curt and terse.

Ian bites his tongue and breathes, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. 

“Oh, I remember back in my day, his mother was quite the movie star,” his mom says from the backseat, and Ian recognizes the tone. “And his father, of course, he was a big deal, too. Have you met them, sweetheart?”

Ian shakes his head. “No, I never really— No.”

They drive in silence for a while, and Ian quietly steels himself for the evening ahead. It’s like he’s almost forgotten how to be around his own family without the awkwardness, without the uncomfortable moments of tense lull in the conversation.

It’s not really that strange, come to think of it—he hasn’t lived at home since he was sixteen, except for the summers, and even then, he spent a lot of time at various training camps, or following his off-ice conditioning routine, so it hasn’t really sunk in yet, the fact that he’s grown up somewhere along the way and left the little boy from Maine behind at his old childhood home. 

When they arrive at the restaurant, the conversation, predictably, eventually turns to hockey. 

“I have no idea what they’re thinking, playing you on the third line,” his dad says over his steak. “You’re not a goon and you never will be, not with how you can’t seem to put any serious muscle on, so I would’ve thought they wouldn’t want to waste you there, playing the physical game.”

Ian licks his lips and shrugs. 

“Dad, come on, you know why,” he says in the end. “The first two lines are really solid and work well together, so they didn’t want to get in the middle of that. And at least I’m _on_ the team. They sent _a lot_ of rookies down to the minors at camp.”

The thing is—Ian knows his father probably thinks that he knows better, because that’s what he always thinks, and Ian has learned the hard way that it’s no use arguing with him, so at some point he just _stopped_. 

And Ian understands why his father is the way he is, but after such a long period of only talking to his family on the phone a couple times a week, it feels exhausting to be back to their old routine.

Adam doesn’t say much during the dinner, but when their parents leave to use the washroom after the meal, leaving them alone at the table, he just waves his hand when Ian asks why he’s been so quiet. 

“I’ve been up since four, barely slept on the way here,” he explains. “It’s a good thing I got this fancy bed at the fancy hotel waiting for me, huh?”

He elbows Ian in the side, the corner of his mouth turning up. 

“Yeah,” Ian says with a smile. “I guess it’s a good thing.”

He hesitates for a moment, picks up the teaspoon he got with his dessert and twirls it for a moment between his fingers. 

“Adam, did dad—” he starts eventually, then cuts himself off, unsure how to proceed. “Did dad mention anything about the money I sent? That I wasn’t helping out enough? Brian said—”

Adam’s lips tighten into a thin line and he shakes his head. “Brian is full of shit, and you know he’d never say anything against dad. And dad’s…you know, he’s just the way he’s always been. It’s not really about the money, though. It’s just that you’re never really home, y’know? Not even in summer. And he’s just taking it out on you the only way he knows how—by talking about the material things. C’mon, Ian, you know dad’s never been one of the touchy-feely stuff. It’s just the way he is. You need to grow a thicker skin and just tough it out, bro, or I don’t even know what to tell you.”

That’s what it always boils down to, in the end. Just tough it out. Grow a thicker skin. Don’t be such a baby. Real men don’t cry. 

And Ian has been trying—he’s been trying so hard since he was just a boy, ten and desperately trying not to let the tears fall as the doctors were setting his broken wrist, but maybe that’s just the thing. Maybe Ian wasn’t made for a thick skin, the way it never really sticks, the way it chafes when he tries to wear it.

Maybe that’s what his father will never understand.

Maybe that’s a fact of life Ian just needs to get used to.

.

Jack invites him to lunch on game day, and Ian stops by the apartment to change into something that’s not ratty track pants and his old Océanic hoodie, frayed at the seams.

Cory is going to be there as well, but he drove over to Jack’s straight after the morning skate and strategy meeting, so Ian doesn’t want to waste too much time and keep them waiting. He quickly changes into jeans and a t-shirt, shrugs on a flannel shirt, then gets his jacket and leaves. 

What he doesn’t expect when he arrives at Jack’s apartment is Kent Parson sitting in the kitchen at the dark wooden table, chugging down a bottle of Gatorade. 

Nathan Olsen, the Aces’ star center, is sitting right next to him, their ankles tangled together.

“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met,” Parson says with a smile as soon as he sees Ian standing in the doorway, and he gets up, extending his hand in a greeting. “Nice to meet the new me.”

“Parse…” 

When Ian turns over his shoulder to look at him, Jack is shaking his head, like he wants to say _don’t_.

“No, seriously, though,” Parson says. “It’s a fucking crying shame the Falcs managed to snatch you before we could. Let’s not make this into a habit, though, yeah? Twice is enough, I think,” he adds, but he’s looking over Ian’s shoulder and straight at Jack.

Behind him, Jack laughs quietly, and Ian can see Parson exhale, like he’s visibly relieved about something. 

A moment later, just as Olsen is getting up to say hello, the front door opens and Eric comes in, two ceramic pots of basil in hand, and a tote bag hanging from his forearm. 

“Could y’all maybe give me a hand with these?” he says, and he gives Ian a smile as soon as he spots him, handing the pots off to Cory. “Jack, your dad called me while I was out, to complain that your phone is off and to tell me that they just landed and will be heading to their hotel to check in and eat something, and that they’ll see you at the arena.”

“God, Zimms, you never fucking change, do you?” Parson asks, leaning with his shoulder against the wall. “Why is your phone _always_ off, Jesus.”

Olsen punches him in the arm. “Don’t be an asshole, you dick.”

Jack looks amused.

“See, the thing is,” he says, unperturbed, “you can eat or you can slander me, but you can’t do both.”

Ian sees Eric smother a smile before he heads further into the kitchen.

“Please, don’t slander Zimmermann,” Olsen says. “His boyfriend is supposed to be great at cooking, and I’m fucking starving.”

“Hey,” Parson says, and he nudges Olsen’s leg with his knee, “you’re supposed to be on _my_ side, what the fuck.”

From less than five feet away, Kent Parson seems surprisingly human. 

He’s everything he’s said to be, and nothing like it at the same time. 

Up close, Ian can see the way his eyes crinkle in the corners when he laughs; he has a cowlick he can’t seem to keep in check, and when they eat, sometimes he talks with his mouth full. It’s almost too easy to forget that out on the ice, he’s the best and most dangerous thing the hockey world has seen in years.

Once Parson and Olsen say goodbye and drive back to their hotel for their pre-game naps, Cory nudges Ian in the side. 

“C’mon, let’s get going, yeah?” he says. “We’ve got some asses to kick.”

Ian doesn’t think he’s going to be more ready for this than he is now.

.

He’s sweating in his expensive game day suit—the same one he was sweating in at draft, under the harsh lights of the cameras trained on him, his hands shaking.

He can feel his shoulders filling out the suit a little better, though, the fabric stretching over his back and arms just a little bit more, and he can feel all the hard work he’s put into his hockey since he first pulled on his Falconers jersey, but he still doesn’t know if that’s enough.

“We got this,” Cory says, knocking into Ian on the way to the locker room.

“Hey, rookie, how’re you holding up?” Christiansen says as soon as Ian settles in his stall and starts to put on his gear. 

His heart is racing so hard he can feel it smash against his ribs. 

Ian swallows, once, twice, trying to get rid of the feeling like the inside of his mouth is filled with sandpaper. 

“I’m good,” he says. 

Now he just needs to believe it.

He puts on the rest of his gear—it’s mechanical, almost instinctual at this point, and it doesn’t require him to think about anything at all. He desperately tries to forget about his parents, sitting in the audience; about the defending Stanley Cup champions, standing on the other side of the face-off dot.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Jack says as he passes Ian on the way out, touching his shoulder briefly before he skates out onto the ice.

Ian bites into the inside of his cheek, nods, and follows.

The first person he notices as he skates out onto the brightly-lit ice is Bob Zimmermann, sitting in the management box with his wife. When he looks away, Parson catches his eye from across the ice and grins. 

When the puck finally drops a few minutes later, Ian’s heart is still going a mile a minute, like a spooked bird rattling around his ribcage, fluttering against the sternum.

It’s a tough game—it’s fast and it’s close, and the Aces don’t give even an inch as the clock ticks down to mark the end of the first period as they skate off for the intermission tied at zero. 

The thing is, they’re playing good hockey, and they know they’re playing good hockey, the kind of thing the audience loves and eats up with a spoon, both teams hungry for the first win of the regular season. But it’s still not winning.

In the end, they finish regulation tied one-one, after Jack and Parson scored in the second and third, and go into overtime, then a shootout that ends two minutes in, after Jack nets a powerful one-timer that leaves Laakkonen helpless between the posts. 

It’s just a fraction of a second, and then it’s over, with their first win of the season and no points for Ian at all. 

And it might have been a great game for the Falconers, but it wasn’t a good game for Ian. He tries to tell himself that they won and that’s what really matters in the end, but he also knows that a team is only as strong as its weakest player, and he doesn’t want to disappoint the organization that took a chance on him, doesn’t want to disappoint the guys who share the locker room with him, and who won more in spite of his presence on the ice than because of it. It’s like Rimouski all over again.

He doesn’t want to have any more games like this. Even if they won in the end.

“Hey, dude, why the long face?” Aaronowitz asks while they’re showering. “We fucking kicked the Aces’ asses, man. Cheer the fuck up, buttercup.”

Ian hopes that if he takes long enough with the shower, the reporters will have left by the time he’s back in the locker room. He doubts they’d even want to talk to him, considering how mediocre his performance today was, but then again, maybe that’s why they _would_ want to talk to him in the first place, grill him for a bit and watch him sweat. 

When he finally walks out of the shower and into the locker room, there are still a few cameras and a bunch of reporters around, but they leave Ian alone, which is exactly what he wanted. They’re crowding Jack instead, which is fair, Ian guesses, since he’s the one with the points on the board and the winning goals. Jack looks loose around the shoulders and he’s smiling.

Once the beats are gone, Jack quickly loses the towel and changes into his street clothes, grabs his bag, says goodbye and leaves. 

When Ian follows him out a moment later, he finds himself face to face with Bob Zimmermann, who’s currently hugging Jack, looking at him like he couldn’t be more proud. Alicia Zimmermann is standing a little to the side, next to Eric, who’s wearing a Zimmermann jersey that might actually belong to Jack, judging by the size of it. 

Behind the Zimmermanns, Ian’s own parents are waiting for him on the other end of the hallway, but Jack stops him before Ian can make his way over to meet them. 

“Dad, this is Ian Davies,” he says, and Ian watches as Bob extends his hand in a greeting. Ian’s own palm feels damp and sweaty. 

“I’m glad to finally meet you in person. Jack’s told me a lot about you,” Bob says, and he gives Ian a small, soft smile. “And congratulations on the draft, son. You couldn’t have come to a better team. Well, maybe apart from the Habs, but I might be a tad biased.”

“A tad,” Jack says with a pointed look.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Ian says, shaking his hand. “And you, Mrs. Zimmermann.”

“Alicia, please,” she says. From up close, she looks even more beautiful, and she’s all class, even dressed in just a pair of jeans and an oversized jersey.

Ian wipes his hands on his jeans and adjusts the strap on his hockey bag. 

“It was really nice to meet both of you, but I, uh, I should probably go,” he says as he makes a jerky motion with his head towards the other end of the hallway. “My parents are waiting for me.”

He leaves them with an awkward, nervous smile, then makes his way over to where his parents and Adam are standing. His dad keeps glancing at his watch. 

“That Bob Zimmermann?” he asks first thing once Ian comes up to them. Ian nods. “That one over there is a chip off the old block, huh?”

It takes Ian a moment to realize that his dad is talking about Jack. 

“Yeah, Jack really looks a lot like his dad,” he admits.

“Well, you could’ve introduced us,” his dad grumbles. “It’s the polite thing to do.”

Ian glances back to where the Zimmermanns are standing, Jack’s arm thrown affectionately around Eric’s neck, and Ian can see the way his father follows his line of sight. His lips form a thin line, and once again, he looks one step away from displeased.

“Congrats on the win, little bro,” Adam says to break the awkward silence and Ian swallows slowly, nodding. 

“It wasn’t my best night,” he says, because it’s true, and it’s better to admit it himself than hear it from somebody else. “But we pulled through. And it was the Aces, so—”

“We’re very proud of you,” his mom says, and she gives him a hug. 

There’s a commotion on the other end of the hallway, and then, when Ian looks over his shoulder, Jack is walking in the direction of their group with his parents and Eric. The two of them are holding hands.

As they pass them by, Jack stops for a moment and briefly touches Ian’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Good game today,” he says, then glances to Ian’s parents and adds, “Jack Zimmermann, nice to meet you. And these are my parents, and my boyfriend, Eric.”

Eric says hello and waves; Alicia introduces herself with a charming, easygoing smile, and then Bob steps forward, his face jovial and open.

“Bob Zimmermann,” he says, and he shakes hands with them—Ian’s mom first, then his dad and Adam. “A pleasure to meet you. You must be very happy to be able to see your son’s first home game in person.”

“Would certainly be nice to see some points, but it was a good game overall,” his dad says, and Ian feels his face fall. “We didn’t expect him to do so well in the draft, certainly not after the season he’d had, but it’s good to see him on a team that will force him to challenge himself if he wants to stay.”

Ian tries to smile. The thing is—what his father is saying is nothing he hasn’t said or thought himself over the last few months, but it still stings, to have his flaws pointed out in front of a hockey legend. But Ian’s dad has never been anything if not brutally honest and straight to the point.

“Ian is a good player,” Jack says, perfectly polite, even though the line of his jaw is strangely tight when Ian glances to the side to look at him. “And his work ethic is impeccable. As his captain, I can assure you that he’s a pleasure to have in the locker room, and we’re very lucky to have him.”

Ian’s father smiles, tight-lipped. “We wouldn’t expect anything else from Ian,” he says.

Once the Zimmermanns and Eric finally say goodbye and leave, Ian clears his throat, about to suggest they get going as well, when the door to the visitors’ locker room suddenly opens and Kent Parson walks out with Olsen. They’re talking about something in low voices, their shoulders knocking together as they walk down the corridor.

Ian is sure Parson will just ignore them, but he slows to a stop in front of their group and gives Ian a nod and a grin. 

“Good game, Davies,” he says, taking off his snapback and raking a hand through his hair, still damp from the shower. “See ya in Vegas.”

As they walk away, Ian stares at his retreating back for the longest time.

.

He drops his parents off at their hotel, and begs off dinner, claiming fatigue. 

Instead, he drives straight home and makes himself a protein shake, then goes to heat up the chili Holster made the day before. The Eagles are on a roadie, so he won’t be home until Monday night anyway, and Ian figures he shouldn’t let it spoil. He’s validated in his decision a moment later, when he spots a post-it note on the side of the fridge. It reads:

_The chili I left in the fridge made Ransom cry_   
_and he loves spicy food, but if you want it, it’s yours_   
_H._

Cory sent him a message earlier, asking if he’d be coming to celebrate with the team, but Ian used his family as an excuse—it’s not entirely inaccurate, but it’s not the whole truth either, because it’s not like he’s sitting with them at dinner right now, so he feels slightly guilty, but no more than he feels relieved to finally be alone for a moment. 

So he reheats the chili and eats it at the kitchen table, ignoring his phone and all the unread messages and voicemails he knows he should read and listen to. 

It’s been a hell of a day.

He feels like he should thank Jack, for what he did back at the arena, because he really didn’t have to say any of that, and it means a lot for his parents to hear it from someone like Jack. Someone they can respect, if not for who he is in his private life, then at least for what he can do on the ice.

In the end, he sends him a short text that only says, _thank you_ , hoping that Jack understands. 

When he scrolls through his messages afterwards, he finds a text from Yannick, asking if they could meet for lunch after the morning skate and strategy, and another one from Cameron, congratulating him on the game. He doesn’t want to disturb Yannick, who’s probably in bed right now, so he just sends a message back that reads, _yeah, sure, i’ll text you the address tomorrow!_

Then he calls Cameron. 

The phone rings for a long while, and Ian almost disconnects, but then Cameron picks up, and when he says, “Hello,” he sounds slightly out of breath. 

“Hi,” Ian says. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Sorry,” Cameron laughs into the receiver, “I was in the shower.”

“Oh,” Ian says. “Sorry, you didn’t have to pick up. I just didn’t think.”

“Sure I did,” Cameron says. “You just won your first NHL game.”

Ian scrapes his teeth against his bottom lip. “Well, my team did. I didn’t do much to help.”

“Look, I might not know shit about hockey, but I know one thing, okay?” Cameron says, and he doesn’t sound exasperated, not really, but rather insistent, like he’s trying to make a point. “That game today? It was wicked cool, and you were a part of it. So yeah, you won, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Ian smiles, despite himself. 

“Okay,” he says, desperately trying to believe it. “And, uh, thanks for saying that.”

Cameron laughs, more of a loud, warm exhale than anything else, but it’s there. 

“So how did your folks like the game?” he asks then, and Ian’s stomach drops instantly. “They must be really proud.”

“Yeah,” he says weakly. “They are.”

He grits his teeth. 

He’ll just have to do better than that. _Be_ better than that. He just needs to try harder, because maybe, despite everything, he’s just not trying hard enough.

“Can’t wait for tomorrow,” Cameron says then. “I’ll see you after the game, right?”

“Yeah,” Ian says, and he can't help the small smile that escapes. Cameron tends to have that effect on him. “After the game. I’ll find you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for all the amazing feedback! I'm positively overwhelmed.  
> And, as usual, huge, huge thanks to all the lovely people who cheer me on while I'm writing this story - particularly to lanyon for the tireless cheerleading and to Codie for the amazing beta. ♥

They meet at the place Ian went with Cameron after the Griffin trade. 

Ian gets there first, and he spends a few awkward minutes sitting at the table all by himself, his stomach tied in knots for some inexplicable reason. 

They haven’t seen each other since the draft, with Yannick at a conditioning camp in Toronto, and Ian down in Providence for most of the summer, and even though they skyped a lot and talked regularly on the phone, it still hasn’t been the same. 

In the juniors, Ian used to spend a lot of time up in Montreal in the summer. Yannick’s parents have a big house just off the island, with a huge backyard and a beautiful garden, and a fluffy dog, and Ian would sometimes come up for a few weeks, to train with Yannick in his basement gym, swim in his outdoor pool, and loiter around the city in their free time. 

Yannick’s parents, who own a vineyard south of Montreal, would usually go down to the summer house for the weekends, leaving the two of them to their own devices, and they would fuck around on Yannick’s PS4 or lounge around the pool if the weather was nice enough, Yannick’s thigh touching his on the huge double beach chair, and all of it would be sort of perfect, if only for a little while.

He hadn’t even realized just how much he missed that this summer until now.

When he finally sees Yannick in person, it’s like a warm wave of relief washes over him, the tight knot in his stomach loosening as he melts into Yannick’s arms, the two of them hugging for a long while. 

“I missed you,” he whispers into the crook of Yannick’s neck. 

When they finally let go of each other, Ian takes a moment to look at him. Yannick seems taller, somehow, as if he’s finally hit the last of his growth spurt somewhere along the way, and more built, like he’s been working on his off-ice conditioning all summer, putting on muscle to get himself in shape for the long season ahead. 

“Missed you too, bud,” Yannick says. “But I’m pretty sure Madeleine misses you even more. You weren’t there to scratch her behind the ears this summer, y’know. I’m pretty sure she took offence.”

“I’ll make it up to her next year,” Ian says, even though they, of all people, should know that it might not happen, if their off-season schedules don’t align. “I might even let her sleep on the bed.” He pauses for a second. “Don’t tell your parents.”

Yannick laughs—a warm, full-body laugh that has him tipping his head back as he stretches in the chair, his shoulders shaking. 

“Deal,” he says. “It’s not like mom wouldn’t let you sleep with _ten_ dogs if you wanted to. And dad would let the dog sleep on the bed anyway, if it were up to him. They say sorry, by the way, but they couldn’t make it down today. They really wanted to see you play, but they have a business meeting or something. In Calgary, whatever the fuck that one’s about.”

Ian smiles. 

“That’s okay, I get it,” he says. “ _My_ parents could barely make it yesterday and they couldn’t even stay for today’s game.”

Yannick takes a good look at him while they’re perusing the menus. There’s a moment of pregnant pause, then he asks, “So how was it? With your folks?”

Ian shrugs. “You know.” He shrugs again. “Same as usual. I met Bob Zimmermann, though. He and his wife were really nice. And Parson. Parson was pretty cool, too. We had lunch.”

Yannick gently nudges Ian’s foot under the table. “Look at you, rubbing elbows with the _crème de la crème_ of hockey,” he says with a smile, his voice fond. “So how’s Providence? Y’know, apart from all the partying with hockey superstars you’ve been doing.”

“It’s…good,” Ian says, carefully measuring his words, because he wants to make sure that Yannick understands what he’s trying to tell him. “Hard, sometimes, but mostly good. The guys on the team are really welcoming, and I…I’ve been doing okay, for the most part. I just don’t want to disappoint everyone like I did last year.”

“Hey,” Yannick says, and his voice gets a bit more forceful as he touches Ian’s forearm briefly. “You didn’t disappoint anyone. The boys knew you’d been doing your best.”

Ian looks up at him. “Yeah, but that’s the thing, right? My best just wasn’t good enough.” He’s silent for a moment, then says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go back to that again. I know it’s in the past now. Clean slate and all that.”

He knows that’s not how hockey works, but it’s nice to pretend.

“But yeah, it’s been fine,” he continues after a moment of silence. Yannick is just waiting, not pressing the issue but giving him space to speak. It’s one of the things Ian likes about him so much. “And I met a few people from, like, outside the organization. One of them is coming to the game today, actually, and he’s probably bringing some friends, so I could, uh, introduce you.”

Yannick leans over the table and stares at Ian for a moment, curls falling over his face as he tries to push them away, frustrated. Back in the juniors, Ian used to carry a few hair ties in his backpack, just in case Yannick forgot to bring one again or lost the one he had on him.

“Dude, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I’m really glad you met someone who doesn’t hit a puck with a stick for a living,” he says. “Because, like, let’s be honest here, we all sort of have our heads up our asses about this whole thing. So it’s nice to have a break from that.”

Ian nods slowly. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s different, without all the expectations. And he doesn’t even really follow hockey.”

“He?” Yannick cocks his head to the side.

“Cameron.”

Their server finally comes by to take their orders, and once she’s gone, Yannick leans forward on his elbows, the sleeves of his flannel rolled up to his elbows, a plain silver band around his wrist. 

“So what’s he like?” Yannick asks. 

“He’s…” Ian hesitates for a moment, then settles on, “easy to talk to. We met through Cory Smith’s girlfriend. It’s…I don’t know. It’s nice, like you said, to have someone who doesn’t care about…all this.” 

They talk for a while after that, waiting for their food to arrive, and Ian gets the impression that Yannick is actually settling in more than okay, despite the weight of the rebuilding franchise on his shoulders (and the fact that Toronto hates the Habs with a passion, which Yannick never fails to remind him of), but then again, Ian expected nothing else. Yannick is easy to like and easy to be around; he works hard but doesn’t take himself too seriously; he adapts easily and he respects his coaches. He’s a good teammate and a good linemate, never selfish with the puck, always playing for the team more than for himself. 

It’s no wonder he went third in the draft. It’s a wonder he didn’t go second.

“So how’s Zimmermann?” Yannick asks once their server brings them their food. “Everything he’s made out to be?”

Ian looks at Yannick from above his plate. “He’s really great,” he says. “He’s been helping me a lot, you know, making sure I feel welcome and have everything I need, and all that. And it’s…I don’t know, but I accidentally overheard something that made me think he really _wanted_ me to make the team, I think? Which is kinda huge, considering who he is and everything. But he’s been just very supportive, really, they all have been. And Jack’s boyfriend is really nice, too.”

On the other side of the table, Yannick just smiles and nods.

When they say goodbye, Ian clings to Yannick maybe just a moment longer than he should, but he’s missed this so much—having Yannick next to him, his calming presence and familiar body, pressed comfortably next to his. He has to physically make himself let go. 

“I’ll see you later,” Yannick says, and Ian nods. “Good luck, bud.” 

He’s desperately trying not to think about the fact that this time, Yannick will be standing across the ice from Ian, not next to him. 

It’s a surreal thought that he can’t really wrap his head around, the fact that the abstract concept of playing not with Yannick but rather against him will become his reality in just a few hours. He wonders, briefly, if that’s what it felt like for Jack, too, last year, right before he fell into Kent Parson’s arms at center ice—hockey history years in the making.

.

He dresses for the game with his heart halfway up his throat. 

He talked to the beats for a little while before he even had the chance to step inside the locker room, keeping a smile on his face as they asked him what it feels like, to be playing against his best friend and long-time linemate from the juniors. 

He can’t even give them the true answer, which is: _terrifying_. 

The truth is, Ian is not jealous of Yannick—he could never be jealous of Yannick, even though out of the two of them, it was Ian who was supposed to go in the top three in the draft—but he’s afraid of his muscle memory taking over in the middle of the game as he passes to Yannick instead of taking the puck away from him, their rhythm too familiar to forget, well-worn like an old glove that fits effortlessly.

If he even gets to play against Yannick’s line at all. He doesn’t know which possibility sounds worse, all things considered.

In the end, when he skates out for his shift—the Falcs already up one after Cory scored five minutes into the first period—the first thing he sees as he looks towards the Falconers’ bench is Cameron, sitting right behind the glass with David and Tamsin, the girl Ian met at the dinner with Dani and Cory, the one who recognized him first. She’s wearing a Falconers jersey. 

When she spots him looking their way, she waves and nudges Cameron in the side. Ian looks away to hide the smile.

Yannick is not on the ice when Ian wins the first face-off, the rush of it loud like blood in his ears as he passes to Griffin, who gets the puck into the Leafs’ defensive zone and passes back to Ian, who taps it almost without conscious thought into the net, right past the goalie. 

It takes him a moment to register that it actually went in.

Then the buzzer goes off to sound the goal, and next thing he knows, Ian is being mobbed by Griffin and Mercer, Aaltonen and Parker following close behind. They’re hugging him, and someone is screaming in his ear, and even though they’re almost crushing him, even through all the padding, for a moment, Ian feels like he can finally breathe.

The Leafs take a solid beating, even though Yannick manages to sneak one past Bergson towards the end of the third, but the game ends 5-1 in regulation, with first ever NHL hat-trick for Cory, a goal and two assists for Jack, and first ever NHL goal for Ian. 

All things considered, it’s a pretty good night.

Jack knocks shoulders with Ian on the way back to the locker room, Cory on the other side of him, practically vibrating with excitement and looking a bit like he wants to cry with happiness.

“You did great,” Jack says, and Cory slaps him across the back, bringing their heads together, grinning through the tears, eyes glassy.

“We fucking did it,” he laughs, and then he moves his hand up to ruffle Ian’s hair. “We fucking _did it_ , dude.”

Ten minutes later, Ian is posing for the cameras, still in his under armor and sweaty as hell, the puck with his name on it raised right next to his face with a trembling hand. He’s a mess of emotions—happiness and gratitude, and relief all tangled up inside of him, swelling in his chest—and he answers the beats’ questions as coherently as he’s capable of at the moment, which is to say, not very much. He’s fairly sure he repeats how grateful he is, how overwhelmed and how happy to be here at least a couple of times. 

Across the room, Cory wipes his face, tears falling now in earnest, but he hasn’t stopped grinning. Next to him, Jack looks incredibly proud.

It’s just a brief thought, but Ian’s shoulders slump for a second when he thinks about Yannick, undressing in the locker room across the corridor, defeated. It’s a strange feeling, being unable to share this with him, realizing now fully for the first time that they are not on the same team anymore, and that sometimes, for Ian to win, Yannick will have to lose. 

And that’s just life, but it still hits him like a punch to the head.

He shakes it off, though, after a brief moment, and goes to shower. When he walks back into the locker room after a while, the beats are gone and everyone is slowly winding down, some of the guys gone already for a post-game workout, some for a massage, some just heading home or out to a bar to celebrate the victory. 

It feels good, he thinks, to win and to know that you contributed to that in some way. That you were more of a help than a hindrance.

“Hey, Davies, you’re coming to the bar with us, right?” Schumer asks just as he’s about to leave the locker room, Aaronowitz hanging off his shoulder. 

“Yeah, rookie, don’t even try to give us that _I’m just tired_ shit, ‘kay?” Aaronowitz says. “This is your first NHL goal, what kind of teammates would we be if we didn’t get you properly and thoroughly _fucked up_?”

Ian hesitates for a moment. The Leafs are staying in Providence until tomorrow, so he was planning to go out with Yannick and Cameron, and maybe Cameron’s friends, if they wanted to tag along, but he doesn’t want to say no to his teammates. 

“I, uh, I have some friends here, so we were thinking about maybe going out after the game, and I wanted to catch up with Yannick, but—” he starts, but Aaronowitz just waves him off.

“C’mon, just bring them with you,” he says. “If anything, I’m guessing Martel could use a stiff drink right about now. Y’know, drown his sorrows, celebrate his goal, whichever he wants. Either. Both. We could buy him more than one drink, really.”

“Yeah,” Schumer adds with a grin. “It’s the least we could do after we essentially fucking _whooped their asses_.”

“What,” Holtzy asks as he walks right past them in the direction of the door, “planning on fraternizing with the enemy?”

Schumer’s grin just gets wider. “Martel is from Montreal,” he says. “So, technically, he’s almost like a brother to Jack, or something. It totally counts.”

Holtzy laughs, shaking his head. “Schumer, you’re so fucking full of shit. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Not recently.” Schumer, if anything, gets even more obnoxiously gleeful. “But thanks for the reminder, babe.”

Holtzy gives him the finger and walks out of the locker room, hauling his hockey bag with him.

“See you there, losers,” he says as he closes the door behind him.

“So, rookie,” Aaronowitz says once Holtzy is gone. “You got your car here? _Leave it_. You’re gonna be fucking crawling home on all fours. The drinks are on us tonight.” 

Ian considers this for a moment. 

“Okay,” he says then. “Just let me check in with Yannick and the rest and we’ll meet you at the bar. The usual place?”

“Yeah, Terry will know to hold a few tables for us, so just get a cab and get your asses down there,” Schumer tells him. 

When he leaves the locker room as one of the last stragglers, a few minutes behind Schumer and Aaronowitz, Cameron is waiting in the hallway, David and Tamsin in tow. 

“Hey, congrats on the game,” Cameron says as he moves to hug Ian, and Ian lets him, lets himself relax into the hug for a moment. Up close, Cameron smells sharp and spicy, like good aftershave. “You were amazing.”

“Yeah, you really kicked some serious ass today,” David says before Ian has a chance to respond.

“My dad’s so jealous I got to sit so close to the glass,” Tamsin adds as she takes a few steps to hug Ian as well. “Totally worth it. You fucking _destroyed_ the Leafs. Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch,” Ian hears behind him, and when he turns around, Yannick is there, freshly showered, his hair still damp. 

Tamsin makes a face. “Yikes, sorry. Hi,” she says, embarrassed, even though she looks like the sort of person who’s usually really difficult to embarrass. “Didn’t really mean it like that.”

Yannick just shakes his head. “Yeah, no worries, they wiped the ice with us today. _We know_.” He turns to Ian, then, and says with a fond smile, “Hey, you. Nice goal today.”

A moment later, Yannick is hugging him so hard Ian can barely breathe. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the crook of Yannick’s neck. “But I’m also…not. Sorry for that, too.”

“Yeah, but that’s life, right?” Yannick says, and thank god he’s never been a sore loser. He takes his losses seriously, but he never lets them devastate him, paralyze him the moment he steps onto the ice again after a lost game. “You win some, you lose some.”

When they part and Ian turns to the rest of the group to introduce them, Cameron looks at him with strange sort of scrutiny. Then he extends his hand. 

“Hi, I’m Cameron, nice to meet you,” he says as he shakes Yannick’s hand. “And congratulations on the goal.”

Ian quickly introduces the rest of them to Yannick, and they slowly make their way down the hallway as David calls them a cab. There are still some people milling around, so Ian and Yannick both sign a few autographs and pose for a couple of selfies while they wait. 

“So, you have a curfew or anything?” Ian asks over the last autograph, the sharpie almost running empty as he tries to scribble down his name and jersey number onto a Falconers snapback. “When do you need to be back?”

Yannick considers it for a moment. “Any time before midnight should be fine.”

Across the lobby, Cameron is beckoning them over as he says in a slightly raised voice, “Our cab is here.”

Ian and Yannick say goodbye to the fans, and they all pile up into the cab. They barely fit, even though the car is big enough to take all of them, but with two hockey players, there’s always some extra room needed to make it work. Ian gives the driver the address.

It’s a short ride, the bar just a few minutes away from the arena, but it takes a little over fifteen minutes to get there on foot, and they’re already running late. 

When they finally arrive and get inside, they’re greeted by a chorus of yells and more than a few catcalls. As they make their way across the room to the tables occupied by the rest of the team, Schumer intercepts them before they can get there and forces a shot into Ian’s hand. 

“Drink up, my man,” he says, and he presses a wet, sloppy kiss to Ian’s cheek, then hands another shot glass to Yannick. “You too, Martel. I’m sure you could use a drink. No hard feelings, yeah?”

Yannick laughs under his breath and shakes his head, his arm thrown comfortably across Ian’s shoulders. 

“No hard feelings.”

When they finally arrive at the table, Ian already two shots in after Schumer insisted on buying him another one— _for a chaser_ , he said, because he’s _Schumer_ —Christiansen and Crozier scoot a bit to make some space for them in the booth, and as soon as they sit down, Christiansen starts flirting shamelessly with Tamsin. When Ian looks over to Cameron, who is sitting on the other side of him, pressing a warm thigh against Ian’s own, Cameron just shrugs and mouths, “What can you do?”

Tamsin, for her part, looks like she doesn’t mind it in the slightest.

Jack and Eric are there, too, sitting on the opposite side of the table, leaning against each other in the corner of the booth, easy and comfortable. Jack is laughing. Sometimes, because of Jack’s sharp focus and the way he carries himself on the ice, it’s easy to forget that Eric can always make him smile. 

It must be nice, Ian thinks, to have something like that with another person. 

“You’re being very quiet,” Cameron says, nudging Ian gently with his elbow. “You good?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Ian reassures him. 

A moment later, the waitress brings three huge plates loaded with food to the table, and it’s not the healthiest Ian’s had after a game, but it will have to do, because right now, he’s starving, and besides, if Schumer and Aaronowitz are going to ply him with shots the entire evening, he probably shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. That’s just a bad idea, and Ian doesn’t really drink much—never has, even back in the juniors, when beer was sometimes easier to come by at parties than water, but he’s willing to indulge Schumer and Aaronowitz just this once. It is, after all, his first NHL goal they’re celebrating.

After a while, the party seems to divide into groups, as it usually happens, and even though Schumer and Aaronowitz are still buying Ian drinks, he’s mostly left alone in his corner of the table, together with Cameron, Yannick and David. 

“So what do you do?” Yannick asks at some point, turning to Cameron, who has been sitting close to Ian the entire time. 

Ian can feel the warmth of his body through the two layers of clothes that separate them, and the inside of the bar is pretty warm as well, with how many people are currently sharing a relatively small space. He’s slowly starting to get drowsy.

Cameron dips one of his fries in mayonnaise, because a person needs to have _some_ flaws, Ian supposes, and chews for a moment before saying, “I’m doing a double major in graphic design and sequential art at Brown. Plus some freelance work on the side, you know the drill.”

It’s not the first time Ian has wondered why Cameron chose Providence over Boston, despite the fact that he is _from_ Boston, but it sounds like one of those seemingly innocent questions that have a high probability of being actually pretty loaded, so he doesn’t ask. And he has no way of knowing if it’s true, but if it is, Ian knows a thing or two about wanting to put a little distance between you and your family.

At around eleven thirty, David says goodbye and taps out for the night, and Ian goes to use the restroom, more out of the need to be alone for a moment rather than anything else. It’s single stall, so he locks himself in and just stands there for the second, in the middle of the white-tiled washroom, the ringing in his ears slowly subsiding. 

He can still hear the muffled voices on the other side. 

His world isn’t spinning, not exactly, but he’s a little unsteady on his feet and when he closes his eyes, he feels the unfamiliar wooziness, the way he seems to float, like he’s drifting on the surface of a warm lake. 

In the end, he splashes his face with water, dries off with a paper towel and leaves.

Back at the table, most of the guys have wandered off, looking for a drink, or a hookup, or something to eat. Jack and Eric seem to be getting their things, ready to leave, and Eric comes up to Ian to give him a hug before they go. Jack just claps him on the shoulder and smiles. 

“You did really great today. We’re all proud of you here,” he says. 

It means more than Jack can even begin to imagine.

He’s about to go back to their table, where Yannick and Cameron seem to be having an animated, friendly discussion about something, but he’s intercepted on his way by Aaronowitz, who thrusts another shot into Ian’s hand without question. Ian downs it after a moment’s hesitation, because to hell with it, he’s feeling nice and loose around the shoulders, for once, even though usually drinking makes him feel weirdly on edge, and he’s not all alone at some house party where he barely knows anyone—he’s out with his teammates.

Leaning against the counter for a moment, Ian checks his messages. There’s one from Cory, saying that he’ll be staying at Dani’s tonight and that they had to leave early because she wasn’t feeling well. There’s one from Adam, congratulating Ian on the goal from him and their parents. And there’s one from Georgia, also congratulating him and inviting him over for a chat. 

There’s a moment of dread as he reads the words, his first thought that he must have done something wrong and it’s like he’s sixteen again and being sent up to the principal’s office. He knows it’s probably nothing. But what if it _is_. 

Slowly, he makes his way over to the table, and that’s when the last shot finally kicks in, pushing him over the edge from tipsy to drunk. He blinks a few times, trying to get his bearings, and sits down next to Cameron, catching himself on the edge of the table. 

“Hey, champ, you okay there?” Yannick asks, looking over to him, concerned. “I’m guessing Schumer and Aaronowitz made good on their promise, eh?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” Ian says. “Probably shouldn’t have taken this last shot, though.” 

Yannick laughs, then looks down at his watch. “Shit, it’s almost midnight. I should be going.”

Ian’s first instinct is to say _no_ , but he knows that he can’t be selfish with this, that they have their own grown-up lives now, separated by over five hundred miles instead of just two streets. Instead, when Yannick stands up to leave, Ian reaches out and hugs him, whispering a quiet, “I’ll miss you,” into the crook of Yannick’s neck. 

“I’ll miss you, too,” Yannick says. “Take care of yourself, okay? And don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”

Ian forces a smile. “That’s not a very long list,” he says, and Yannick laughs. “But I won’t.”

They hug again, and when Yannick leaves, Ian just stands there for a moment, looking at the set of his shoulders as he disappears outside. 

“Wanna bail?” Cameron asks, coming to stand next to Ian. He already has his leather jacket on. “We could share a cab.”

Ian looks around at the rest of his teammates, scattered across the bar, then back to the front entrance.

“Sure,” he says. “Let’s go.”

.

They hail a cab outside the bar and Ian climbs into the backseat after Cameron. He still feels drunk, but far from blackout drunk, and on any other night, he probably would just keep his mouth shut, but tonight, he feels lonely and misses Yannick already, and he doesn’t want to go to an empty apartment, with Cory out to take care of Dani and Holster still not back from his roadie. 

“Hey, d’you wanna go back to my place?” he asks, slowly turning to face Cameron. “It’s not even midnight yet.”

At this point, the drowsiness finally settles in, and Ian wants nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep, but at the same time he doesn’t want the evening to end yet. It’s a soft, warm feeling that settles at the center of his chest, right beneath the sternum. 

“Yeah, sure,” Cameron says. “I should probably make sure you get home safely.”

“I didn’t mean—” Ian starts, then pauses. “I meant we could watch tv, or play some games, or whatever. There’s still some chili one of my roommates made, it’s really good. Y’know, if you’re hungry or anything.”

Cameron hesitates for a moment. 

“I mean,” Ian says quickly, swallowing past the embarrassment burning in his face, “you don’t have to, obviously, I can just drop you off at home or wherever you want, and, y’know…I mean, it wasn’t— I wasn’t trying to—”

Cameron reaches over to touch his shoulder. 

“Ian, it’s fine,” he says. “We can totally do that. Just…eat some chili, drink something that doesn’t have any alcohol in it, for a change, kick back and watch Netflix or whatever. It’s all good.”

The streets are mostly empty this time of night, and they get back to the apartment in record time. As the driver parks at the curb, Ian reaches for his wallet, but Cameron is faster, and he tosses the man a couple of crumpled bills, doesn’t wait for the change. 

“C’mon,” he says, stepping out of the cab and onto the sidewalk. Ian starts to protest, because, really, he should be the one paying for the cab here, but Cameron just shakes his head and adds, “No, seriously, I’m good for it. C’mon, let’s go upstairs.”

The moment the slightly chilly air hits Ian’s face, the urge to take a nap right this second passes, at least for the moment. 

Upstairs, Ian unlocks the door on the first try and pushes it open, stepping to the side to let Cameron in at the same time as he hits the light switch. His eyes squint the moment the light floods the room, bright and offensive after the dim lighting at the bar and the middle-of-the-night drive back.

“D’you want something to drink?” Ian says, shrugging off his jacket and toeing off his shoes at the door. He drops the keys onto the dresser and makes his way into the kitchen, then pulls out two glasses from the cabinet and a Brita pitcher from the fridge.

“Yeah, water should be fine,” Cameron says as he stands in the archway, leaning against the wall with his shoulder. “Nice place.”

Ian pours them each a glass of water, drops a slice of lemon into each and hands one of them to Cameron.

“Thanks,” he says, then downs almost half the glass in one go. He feels parched. “It’s Cory’s place, really, I just live here. He was leasing it last year, but the owners decided to sell, so he, uh, jumped at the opportunity.”

“Yeah, no, I get that,” Cameron says. “I have an apartment off the campus, near Blackstone, and I got a pretty sweet deal on it, but it was a lot of being in the right place at the right time, y’know? And it doesn’t hurt when your parents are in real estate.”

Ian has gathered, from the few clues here and there, that Cameron probably came from money, but now he has the confirmation. The thing is, though, Ian spent a lot of his life around people who came from money, and for the most part, they were douchebags who liked to brag about it. Yannick was different, obviously, but there had been a few other guys on the team who had wealthy parents, and they never let anyone forget it, least of all Ian. Even back in Maine, there had been a few boys who thought he couldn’t see them sneer about his well-worn equipment—or maybe they knew he noticed and that was the entire point. 

But Cameron is more like Yannick or Jack—he doesn’t flaunt it, doesn’t try to rub his wealth in people’s faces, and Ian can definitely appreciate that in a person.

“Must be nice,” he says. Now that he’s back inside, in a warm, heated room, the drowsiness comes back, but he fights it as hard as he can. 

They make their way to the living room area, and Cameron puts on something from the Netflix selection, some show Ian has never seen and which he doesn’t really pay much attention to once it starts. He just mostly slumps further into the couch, his head resting against the leather, his eyes half-closed. He still sips at his water every now and then, more measured this time, trying to stave off the inevitable hangover. Thank god they don’t have practice until later in the afternoon, and it’s an optional skate. 

It’s not like Ian would skip an optional skate, because that’s not the kind of player he wants to be, but it’s nice to know that the possibility is there, if he feels really unwell.

“So…why Brown?” he asks eventually. He figures it’s vague enough that Cameron doesn’t feel obligated to tell him anything he doesn’t want to share, and there’s nobody else here to hear it. “I mean, you’re from Boston.”

Cameron laughs softly. “Believe it or not, I came here because of David,” he says. “He got into Brown, and we’d been doing the long-distance thing for a while then, so when I got my letters of acceptance, I picked Brown. The relationship clearly didn’t last, but the friendship did, and I genuinely like the arts program here, so, y’know, I have no regrets.”

They sit in companionable silence for a while, idly watching the show, when Cameron says, “It was really nice to meet your friend. Yannick, I mean. Now I get why you like him so much.”

Ian smiles. “Yeah, we’ve been friends for a long time.”

Cameron nods, quiet and focused. “Must be hard,” he says eventually, “not having him here.”

Ian worries his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. 

“It is what it is, you know?” he says eventually. “We knew what we were signing up for.”

Cameron regards him for a moment. “Did you, though?”

In a way, it’s both the truth and a lie. 

At six, watching a hockey game play on a small tv in the living room, Ian had no idea that he would learn how to get up at five and push his body every day past its limits, through the hurt and pain, gritting his teeth as he just takes it without a word of complaint. He had no idea he would be shaking on the inside before every major game, trying so hard not to disappoint his parents, not to disappoint the people who believed in him. At six, he had no idea about concussions and fractured wrists, and smashed collarbones, and cut Achilles tendons.

But at the same time, he knew he was willing to give it all up to do one thing he loved the most ever since he stepped onto the ice for the first time: play hockey.

“In a way,” Ian says, suddenly wistful. “You never really know, as a kid. But by the time I got drafted to the Q, I knew.”

He stifles a yawn, then another. Cameron turns his head a little to look at him. In this light, his eyes are a strange color. 

“I should probably be going,” he says, but he doesn’t get up. 

Ian just nods. “Okay,” he says. “And thanks for staying. I know you must be pretty tired, and I’m sure you have classes tomorrow, and—”

“Nah, it’s good,” Cameron says. “I have Mondays free, just some inks to finish up, but I work from home, so.”

He hugs Ian goodbye at the door, thanking Ian once again for the tickets and the rest of the evening. 

“I had a really nice time, hanging out with you,” he says before he leaves. “Your teammates are cool, too. I’m pretty sure Tamsin went home with one of them.”

“Christiansen,” Ian says with a nod. “He’s a decent dude.”

“Anyway, it’s been really nice,” Cameron says as he finally opens the door. “So thanks. And goodnight.”

Once he’s gone, Ian doesn’t even bother showering, just gets into bed and checks his phone one last time, to make sure that his alarm won’t go off at five thirty. There’s a message from Yannick, and he opens it on instinct more than anything else. It reads: 

From: **Yannick**   
_your new friend is cool :)_   
(00:17 am)   


.

He comes by Georgia’s office the next day after practice. 

“You wanted to see me?” he says as she looks up at him from a stack of papers scattered all over her desk.

“Davies.” She smiles. “Come in.”

Ian closes the door behind him and slowly crosses the room, then tentatively sits in one of the leather chairs. Georgia doesn’t exactly _scare_ him, but he has a lot of respect for her and he knows she’s always honest and to the point, so whatever she has to say, it will be like ripping off a band-aid. 

“Is something wrong?” he asks. 

To his surprise, she starts to laugh quietly. 

“Wow, talk about a déjà vu,” she says. “I had this exact same conversation with Jack last year. Relax, Davies, you’re not getting traded and you’re not getting booted off the team. I just wanted to check in with you, see how you’re settling in.”

“Oh.” Now he just feels silly and embarrassed, his ears burning. “I, uh, I like it here. I like the team, they’re good guys.”

For a moment, Georgia just keeps looking at him with scrutiny, like she’s trying to gauge whether he’s telling the truth. Then she leans back slightly in her chair and re-ties her ponytail in a few quick, efficient moves, gathering the loose strands that must have been bothering her. She remains composed, as always, and inscrutable. 

“Coffee? Tea?” she asks then.

“Coffee, thank you,” Ian says, fully expecting her to get her assistant to do it, but she stands up from behind the desk and walks over to the table in the far corner of the room.

Ian looks around the office for a bit while she busies herself with the French press. The room is tastefully furnished, not impersonally sparse but not cluttered either, with framed photos on the walls, a few medals and trophies from Georgia’s days as a hockey player on the women’s US national team, some plants in ceramic pots standing in a neat row on the windowsill. There’s a framed picture of Georgia with another woman sitting on her desk, and it takes Ian a moment to realize that it’s her wife. 

“So, Ian,” Georgia says, setting a cup of coffee in front of Ian, “how do you like Providence?”

When he looks up at her questioningly, she just shakes her head and says, “Come on, I already told you I didn’t bring you here to tell you you’re off the team. Is it so hard to believe that I want to know how my players are doing? You’re new here, so you might not know this, but I have these chats with all the guys on the team. So? Do you have everything you need here? Is there anything we can do for you? It goes both ways, you know.”

Ian thinks about it, how there’s still that part of him which reminds him from time to time that maybe he should talk to someone about the way he gets sometimes, so stressed about everything, but then again, everyone in this profession lives under a lot of stress and they all manage somehow. So maybe there’s really nothing to talk about, maybe he should just listen to what his dad and his brothers say and just suck it up and deal. 

“I’ve felt really welcome here,” he says instead. “I’m really glad to be a part of this organization. I’ve been learning so much, and I just hope I don’t make you regret drafting me.”

He tries to laugh it off, but the joke that’s not really a joke falls flat. Georgia regards him curiously for a moment. 

“Davies, you’re here because we wanted you here,” she says eventually. “That’s all there is to it. We wanted you, and we got to have you, and we’re lucky that we did. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that. And if you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. That’s what I’m here for, when I’m not drowning under a metric crap-ton of paper.”

Ian ducks his head to hide the smile that escapes.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

.

They go on a four-game roadie after that, with two back-to-back games in New York and one in Jersey, before ending their road trip in Buffalo with a game against the Sabres. They sweep New York and Jersey, their winning streak extended to five games. Jack has been scoring consistently, incredible on the first line, currently leading the league in points and goals, and it’s been the best season opening in the Falcs’ history, even with a few of the key players still on IR. 

At the end of the roadie, Bergson is stretched thin, complaining about strong pain in his left foot, and they’re playing the Bruins two days after they return to Providence. Games against Boston have always been rivalry games—the truth is, Boston doesn’t like Providence, and the feeling is entirely mutual—so it’s a matter of pride more than anything else. The points are important, but what is even more important is that they beat Boston on home ice in a way that leaves no doubt as to which team is truly superior.

No one is surprised, then, when Mark decides to start Charron in goal against Buffalo. They’ve been having a lousy start to the season, with no wins and all games lost in regulation, the team apathetic and disjointed. By all accounts, it should be an easy win, even with an inexperienced goalie in the net.

Instead, it’s a disaster.

The officiating is a joke right off the bat, the refs calling bullshit penalties and offsides left and right, calling no goal twice even after it had clearly gone in. Jack looks like he’s this close to snapping, but keeps his cool. 

The way the rest of the game goes, though—that’s worse.

It’s not that they’re not taking this seriously, because they’re not that kind of team and they never assume they’ll get the win just handed to them, but it’s still a slaughter. Charron looks paralyzed between the posts, starting his first NHL game scared shitless to the point of total mental shutdown, and even with the guys on the blue line working their asses off, they can’t stop all shots on goal before they happen. 

In the end, Jack scores, because he always scores, but Charron allows six goals in before Mark finally swaps him for Bergson in the third, doped up on painkillers, but by then, it’s already too late. 

They lose in an epic blowout, 6-1, and by the time they’re back in the locker room, Charron looks like he wants to drown himself in the shower.

Bergson looks half-pissed, half-pitying, and it’s not a pretty look on him, but then again, it takes more than a goalie to lose a game. They all know that. Bergson knows that. 

Maybe someone should make sure Charron knows that, too, Ian thinks. 

When he gets out of his gear and walks into the showers, Charron is standing under the scalding spray that curls into mist in the humid air, his head down. There are a few other guys already showering, but they keep their distance, minding their business, which is maybe what Ian should do as well, except then he hears a muffled noise that sounds like Charron is crying.

Ian steps into the stall right next to him and turns the water on, yelps a little when the initially cold spray hits his skin. 

Charron glances briefly to the side, then wipes under his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes are red. 

“I fucked up,” he says, his voice choked up. “I know I did. I need to apologize to the team.”

Ian stays quiet for a moment, soaping himself up thoroughly, spending a long while washing his hair until it feels squeaky clean under his fingers, skin dragging a little against the strands. Then he says, “You weren’t the only player on the ice, you know.”

Once he turns to the side a second later, he sees Jack, two stalls down, looking in his direction with an expression that’s impossible to decipher. When Jack catches him looking, he just nods, then goes back to showering.

The beats grill Jack for solid fifteen minutes once he gets back to the locker room, and there’s a group of them circling Charron, too, who’s mostly red and very, very embarrassed, but at least he’s not crying anymore. True, he barely holds it together, from the looks of it, but he _does_ , and that’s the most important thing. The first rule of dealing with beat reporters is this: never let them smell fear, never let them know you’re bleeding out on the inside.

Ian sits with him on their way home. It’s a short flight, and Charron spends the entirety of it trying to pretend he’s asleep. Ian knows he’s faking, but he takes the aisle seat and makes sure no one gets close enough to notice. He doesn’t say anything either—it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that Charron wants to be left alone right now, to nurse his wounded pride.

When they touch down in Providence, it’s past midnight, so maybe it’s just the fact that Ian is dead tired, the road trip finally catching up to him in one moment, but he could swear he hears Charron whisper a quiet, “Thanks,” as they leave the plane.

.

They have the following day off, just an optional skate in the afternoon, but Ian goes anyway. When he walks with Cory into the locker room, he sees Charron’s clothes already left in his stall, but Charron himself is nowhere to be seen. 

After a while, Cory nudges Ian in the arm with his elbow, inclines his head in the direction of the ice. When Ian concentrates, he can hear the faint, familiar sound of a puck hitting the pads.

“Think I found him,” Cory says. 

The only other stall that’s not currently empty belongs to Jack.

They gear up and walk quietly in the direction of the ice. The moment the surface of the rink opens up in front of them, they see Charron in goal, looking determined but terrified, and Jack, facing off against him on center ice. They watch as Jack gains speed and moves the puck along with him, going for a smooth wrist-shot that sinks the puck in the net top-shelf glove-side. Charron visibly deflates, but Jack just taps the ice with his stick. 

“C’mon, one more,” he says in French, or at least that’s what Ian think he says. His Quebecois is a bit rusty by now. “You _can_ do this, Charron.”

In response, Charron says something that Ian can’t quite catch, but Jack nods, then sets up the next shot. It goes on for a while longer, then Jack calls for a break, skates back to the bench to get a drink. As he does, Cory finally steps onto the ice.

“Don’t tell me we’re the only suckers who dragged their asses to practice today,” he says. “Not that it doesn’t, like, speak volumes to our work ethic or whatever, but also, I could still be in bed right now.”

“Nobody forced you, Smithy,” Schumer says from behind their backs, and Cory turns around dramatically to give him the finger. 

“Nobody asked you, Schumer,” he says. “Where’d you lose your better half?”

“I resent that implication,” Schumer says, poking Cory with the end of his stick. “But if you must know, the fucker’s slacking off today.”

In the end, they take turns taking shots at Charron in goal, do some semi-serious line work while they’re at it, and Ian spends a few amazing minutes on Jack’s wing as they pass back and forth across the ice. Suddenly, he understands what it means to share the ice with the caliber of player Jack is, the way everything suddenly seems to become almost effortless, almost too good to be true. 

Gradually, a few other guys start to slowly trickle in over the next fifteen minutes, followed by Mark, who looks a bit grim, but not as much as he could be, considering the circumstances.

They know they dropped the fucking ball yesterday, though the officiating certainly didn’t help, and the two goals that weren’t allowed in could’ve actually changed the way it all went down. But Mark doesn’t say anything—he knows that they know, and they’ll be watching the tape soon enough, if only to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It’s just an optional skate, but they still make the most of it, and by the time it comes to a close, they’re sweating and out of breath, walking back to the locker room as a group, laughing and joking. 

Once he’s showered and changed into his street clothes, Ian checks his phone for messages. There’s one from Yannick, who’s out on a roadie in Vancouver, announcing that the hotel food sucks balls, one from Cameron, who asks if Ian is free for lunch, and one from Brian. This one reads: 

From: **B.**   
_i’ll be in prov thurs-sat for a seminar._   
_wanna meet up?_   
(11:34 am)

The truth is, he doesn’t particularly want to see Brian right now, but he doesn’t have a good enough excuse not to go. Their game against the Bruins is on Wednesday, and then they have three blessed days of break before taking on the Schooners on Sunday. Apart from practice, they have nothing else scheduled on those three days, and even with off-ice conditioning factored in, Ian’s schedule is pretty open—as open as it gets during the season. 

Usually, they don’t see each other very often, with Brian stationed down in Virginia, but this year, Ian wasn’t home while Brian was on leave, so the last time they actually saw each other face to face was at Christmas. There was also the Skype conversation back in August, when Brian blew up at Ian for spending most of his summer in Providence instead of at home in Maine.

And maybe Brian was right—maybe it _was_ selfish and ungrateful of Ian to just ditch their parents for a summer in the city a few states away, but it made Ian angry, too: angry with Brian, who’s always been the favorite son, who never had to fight tooth and nail for their father’s approval and still come up short, time and time again.

In the end, he sends a quick, _yeah, sure, friday okay?_ and calls Cameron to make plans for lunch.

.

They crush the Bruins on Wednesday, and Bergson gets a shutout. 

Jack is currently on a seven-game point streak, and Ian gets an assist; Yannick calls him after the game to congratulate him. 

On Thursday, Ian sleeps in until six, then spends two hours at the pool, until his hair and skin smell like chlorine, his fingers and toes pruning, and he almost forgets that he’s seeing Brian in more or less twenty-four hours.

.

On Friday morning, he gets up, grabs a protein bar and takes Blueberry out for an early jog, just to wake himself up and calm the nerves.

He’s seeing Brian for breakfast, before his practice and Brian’s second day of the seminar, which doesn’t start until eleven. 

He doesn’t really think about anything as he runs, and he doesn’t stop until Blueberry starts to pant a little after a while. At that point, Ian slows down to match her pace, turning back in the direction of the apartment. 

“Everything okay, girl?” he asks softly, crouching to scratch her behind the ears and kiss her on the head. She tries to lick his face. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Cory and Holster are up by the time Ian gets back, and he lets Blueberry off the leash as soon as the door closes behind them; she barrels on across the living room and into the kitchen, where she jumps straight into Cory’s lap, tail wagging. 

“Hey, little girl,” Cory says, ruffling her fur. “Did you have a nice walk? Thanks, man, by the way,” he adds, looking up at Ian. “I got up a while ago to take her out, but the two of you were already gone.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Ian says, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 

Holster offers him some of the leftover scrambled eggs, but Ian just shakes his head. 

“I’m meeting my brother for breakfast.”

When he arrives at the breakfast place somewhere around half past eight, Brian is already there, looking through the menu. He’s easy to spot, towering over most people, sporting a regulation crew cut.

“Hey,” Ian says, taking a seat in the booth across from Brian. “When’d you get here?”

“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen,” Brian says. 

He’s out of uniform, but even now he carries himself like a soldier, his back ramrod straight, his posture impeccable. Ian remembers, vaguely, that their grandfather used to be the same way. 

“So how’ve you been?” Brian asks then. The server comes by to take their orders, and Ian gets himself a double order of eggs with some bacon on the side and a cup of coffee. He’s starving after the early run, powering through the morning on nothing but a protein bar.

“Good,” Ian says, looking down at the varnish chipping off in the corner of their table. He picks at it for a moment before forcing himself to stop. “I’m good. The season’s been going pretty well so far, so, y’know.”

The thing is, Ian thinks, that you shouldn’t have to make awkward, stilted _small talk_ with your closest family. But that’s exactly what happens. They talk about small, insignificant, mundane things, tiptoeing around the topics they both want to avoid. Brian pretends that he doesn’t need to apologize for anything, and Ian pretends that he’s fine with it. 

Finally, after a long, awkward silence as Ian finishes eating, Brian says, “Dad wasn’t very happy with your attitude back when they visited for the home opener.”

Ian presses his lips together. “Well, maybe dad shouldn’t have humiliated me in front of Bob Zimmermann.”

Brian gives him a long, disapproving look. 

“You shouldn’t talk about dad like that. You know he only wants what’s best for you.”

“He literally said that they didn’t expect me to go in the first round,” Ian says, feeling fifteen all over again, trying to fight the tightness in his chest. “And that I had a disappointing game. Did he think I didn’t _know_ that? That he had to remind me of that in front of a hockey legend and my team captain?”

He wants to go. He wants to get up, throw some cash on the table to settle the bill and leave. 

The truth is, Brian will always, _always_ side with dad, because dad will always, _always_ side with Brian—that’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it will be, and really, Ian should know better than to argue. But it still stings, every time he thinks about it, what his dad said after that game. What he said in front of two people Ian respects so much as players and as people, just moments after Bad Bob had congratulated him on getting drafted in the first round.

“Ian,” Brian leans over the table, propped up on his elbows, “you gotta learn how to take criticism. Dad didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, you just need to grow a thicker skin and deal with it. You’ve always been a talented kid, and hockey always came easy for you, but you need to understand that this is not the mites anymore and you’re not the most talented kid on the team without even trying. This is a whole different level you’re playing at now, and people are going to say worse things, _way_ worse things. Dad was just being honest. You know he always is.”

Ian takes a deep breath, grits his teeth. 

“Yeah, no, I get it,” he lies. “I get it. I know.”

He looks at his watch. 

“I should probably get going,” he says. “I gotta get to practice soon.”

He flags down their server before Brian has a chance to say anything and settles the bill. 

“It was good to see you,” he tells Brian as they’re saying goodbye. He almost, _almost_ means it.

.

The rest of October goes by quickly. After a brief road trip that takes them down to Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Detroit, they begin a long period of homestead, which Ian is grateful for, and keep winning on home ice, for the most part, which is even better. 

It’s a tough season, right out of the gate, but the Falconers are doing pretty well for themselves, all things considered. Ian is there on the ice for some of it, but he still watches most of it from the bench as it happens, their first and second lines playing some of the best hockey this franchise has ever seen. 

Ian knows that, in comparison, what he does when it’s his time to skate out for a shift is completely unremarkable. The hockey blogs like to remind him of that, too, in case he forgets. 

He doesn’t though—he doesn’t forget, and he keeps up with his training, on and off the ice, and he pushes himself harder than ever. He sees Cameron a few times, mostly meeting up for lunch after practice, and he invites him over once or twice, and he does his best to keep his head above water, even though from time to time, he still feels like he’s drowning.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, huge thanks for all the amazing feedback! I appreciate it _so much_ , and it continues to blow my mind on a regular basis.  
> Also, as usual, huge thanks to lanyon for all the cheerleading and to Codie for beta. ♥

It’s no one’s fault, really, when it happens. 

They’re playing the Canucks in early November, and it’s three minutes until the end of the second, right at the end of Ian’s shift, when he feels his knee give out under him as he skates towards the blue line, blinding pain erupting behind his eyes. He waits for the reality of the dirty hit to catch up to him, waits for the impact to register in his mind, but there is nothing, and he still can’t get up. 

He closes his eyes for just a second, and when he opens them again, blinking, his mouth full of blood from where he hit the ice, splitting the inside of his lip, Jack is there, hovering above him with a trainer, looking pale and worried. 

When he tries to move, the pain almost knocks the wind out of him.

They get a stretcher, and he cries when the paramedics carry him off the ice. 

In the end, they rush him to the hospital and put him on long-term IR with a sprained MCL. Eight to ten weeks, they say, if it all goes well. The sprain might be fairly mild, all things considered, but it hurts like hell, the knee swollen and too warm to the touch.

He was lucky, they say. Anything more substantial and he would need surgery, would probably be sidelined for the rest of the season, if not more. 

Ian watches the remainder of the game on his phone at the hospital, while he waits for the doctor to come back. The Falconers win 4-1 in regulation. 

Georgia gets to the hospital before anyone else can reach him. She’s calm and professional, as always, and she talks with the doctor in a quiet voice, just outside the examination room—quiet enough that Ian can’t really hear what is being said. 

“Davies,” she says, walking inside the room after a moment and closing the door behind her. She smiles at him, compassionate but not pitying. “How are you holding up?”

Ian swallows, tries to gather his thoughts through the drug-induced fog that feels like cotton inside his head. 

“I’m okay,” he says. “The guys won, right? I watched them on my phone. Sorry I couldn’t be there. I’m—”

“Davies. _Ian_ ,” Georgia says with emphasis. “It’s okay. They won the game, but I’m sure they’re more concerned about you. I’ll pass a message along to them, let them know you’re okay. I talked to the doctors, checked in with the team orthopedist. They’re very optimistic about your recovery. It could’ve been much worse, but you got lucky.”

Lucky. That’s one word for it. 

“Thank you,” Ian says, not really sure what, exactly, he’s thanking Georgia for. “Do I need to stay here for the night?”

Georgia shakes her head. “No, you’re free to go,” she says. “I have a car ready and waiting for you. Do you have anyone you can call? I know you live with Cory Smith, but it’s gonna be a while before he’s able to get home, and you should have someone with you just in case, especially since you’re getting the crutches. I can send one of my people with you, that’s not a problem, but if you’d rather have a friend take you home… I know your parents live out of town.”

Ian tries to concentrate for a while, tries to think of anyone he could conceivably call that could come pick him up. Most of his friends here are the guys on the team, Dani is working, and Holster is out of town on a roadie with the Eagles.

“I, uh,” he says, licking his lips. His throat feels parched. “I’ll try to call someone.”

Georgia leaves then, to give him some privacy while he scrolls through his contacts and then dials Cameron’s number.

He waits for a few long seconds before Cameron finally picks up. 

“Hey, what’s up?” he says, his tone light, which means he probably hasn’t heard yet. “Don’t you guys have a game today? I thought you’d still be at the arena.”

Ian swallows painfully and licks his lips again, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. He can taste the sickly bitterness at the back of his throat.

“I’m actually at the hospital,” he says eventually. “I sprained my MCL halfway through the second. I, uh,” he swallows again, trying to keep it together, “I won’t be able to play for a while, and they have a car waiting for me, but I’m gonna be probably on crutches for a day or two, and there’s no one else at the apartment, so— I mean, I just wanted to ask, if you’re not too busy, could you come pick me up at Rhode Island Hospital, or wait for me in front of my building? It shouldn’t take long.”

There’s a moment of silence. 

“ _What_?” Cameron asks then. “Jesus, are you okay? What _happened_? Okay, you know what, we can talk later. I can be at your place in about ten to fifteen minutes, depending on the traffic. Want me to wait up for you in front of your building or do you want me to come pick you up at the hospital?”

It’s like a wave of relief washes over Ian; he takes a few deep breaths and grips the edge of the bed with his free hand. 

“Just…just wait for me in front of my building, okay? There’s a car waiting to take me home, I just need to— And could you maybe pick up some ice on your way? I’m gonna have to ice this pretty regularly and I don’t think we have any left.”

He can hear Cameron exhale. 

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Cameron says. “See you there.”

Ian disconnects the call and stuffs his phone back into the pocket of his hoodie, then looks up at Georgia. 

“I’ll, uh, I’ll have someone waiting for me,” he says. “Thank you for coming down here.”

Georgia just shakes her head. “It’s my job to look after my players,” she says. “And even if it wasn’t…”

Ian nods, filled with gratitude. 

The doctor comes back a moment later, with a prescription for painkillers and instructions on how to proceed once Ian is at home. He knows there’s a lot of PT waiting for him in the foreseeable future, but for now he should just ice the knee regularly and keep it elevated, to let the swelling go down. 

They give him a brace for the knee and a pair of crutches, instructing him to use them just for the first couple of days and not rely on them _too much_. 

Ian listens and nods, makes mental notes to himself and thanks the doctor once he’s done talking. 

“You’ll have your team orthopedist reevaluate you in a few days, once the swelling goes down,” the doctor says then. He’s an older man with graying hair that turns completely white at the temples. “We expect you to make full recovery in about eight to ten weeks. You got really, really lucky there, son. A fraction more, and you’d be out for _months_.”

Ian listens numbly, trying not to think about the what-ifs. It could’ve been so much worse, but it _wasn’t_ , even though back there on the ice, it was like he felt his career ending before it’d even properly begun.

.

Georgia sends him home in a spacious car that has more than enough leg room for Ian to sit comfortably on the short ride back to his apartment. Once they’re about halfway there, his phone lights up with a message from Cameron, announcing that he’s already there, waiting for Ian with a pack of ice and McDonald’s. 

It’s then that the anxiety catches up to him. He barely hesitated before dialing Cameron’s number, but they’re—well, Ian would like to think that they’re friends, but they haven’t known each other that long, so maybe they’re more like casual acquaintances, who sometimes go to lunch and sometimes hang out but don’t really call each other in case of medical emergency, expecting the other to just drop everything to be at their beck and call.

Maybe Cameron was just too nice to say no. 

Ian spends the rest of the ride nervously bouncing his good knee, and when the driver finally drops him off in front of his building, Cameron is there, leaning against the wall of the building, two bags in hands. Ian slowly clambers out, minding the injured knee, and thanks the driver, then hobbles over to the front door. 

“Hey,” Cameron says, taking in the sight of Ian, one knee bent awkwardly as he struggles with the crutches. “You hanging in there? C’mon, let’s go, the food is getting cold and the ice is melting.”

“Hey,” Ian says back as he punches in the code to let them in. Cameron holds the door. “Thanks for coming. Sorry to bother you, but I didn’t really know who to ask. Cory won’t be home for a while yet, Holster is out of town, and my folks—”

“It’s okay, I was just finishing up some sketches to ink tomorrow and slowly getting cross-eyed,” Cameron says as they slowly walk towards the elevator. “But, Jesus, _what happened_? Did someone hit you? Like, check you?”

Ian shakes his head. He still really doesn’t know what happened, the way his knee just gave out under him for no apparent reason. He knows it’s relatively easy to damage any of the knee ligaments playing hockey, but he never imagined he’d get benched for more than two months in his rookie year because of that.

“No, it just…it just happened,” he says as he pushes the button for his floor. “I went down halfway through the second, mid-skate. Nobody even touched me. I must’ve twisted my knee or something, I don’t know.”

The elevator door opens in front of them and Ian hobbles out, followed by Cameron. As they reach the door to the apartment, Ian awkwardly props the crutches against the wall and rummages around his pockets for the keys. It takes him a second to fish them out, and then he fumbles with the lock for a moment before the door finally opens and Ian lets both of them in, hitting the light switch as he goes.

“Okay, just go sit down on the couch and keep your leg up,” Cameron says, “and I’ll put the ice in the freezer. Do you have, like, ice packs or something? I can chuck them in, too.”

Ian unzips the hoodie and walks over to the couch, then gently sits down, propping his leg up on the low coffee table. Blueberry slowly trots over to him and nuzzles his hand with her cold, wet nose when he doesn’t immediately pet her.

“There should be two in the bathroom,” he says. “I’m gonna go get them.”

“Like hell you are,” Cameron says. “Sit down and ice this shit.”

He hands Ian a makeshift icepack wrapped in a linen towel. Ian slowly, gingerly pulls one leg of his pants up to mid-thigh and presses the icepack to his swollen, slightly inflamed knee. The relief is almost overwhelming. 

After a moment, Cameron comes back with the two icepacks and goes to throw them into the freezer next to the leftover ice. Then he sits down on the couch next to Ian and hands him the takeout bag. 

“I know it’s fast food, but it’s the best I could do on a short notice, sorry,” he says. 

Ian just bites into his cheeseburger with a quiet groan. Suddenly, he feels starving, like his hunger finally caught up to him and this slightly flattened cheeseburger is the best thing he’s ever eaten. He chews for a moment and takes another bite, this time the salty, artificial flavor fully registering as he eats, but at the moment, he’s slightly high on painkillers and long past caring. 

“It’s okay,” he says finally, his mouth still half-full. 

“So…how bad is it?” Cameron asks then. 

Ian is silent for a moment as he devours the rest of the cheeseburger, then reaches into the bag for another one.

“They’re saying I got lucky,” he tells Cameron. “It’s sprained, but it could’ve been much, much worse. It was close, but I don’t need surgery or anything, just a lot of rest and physical therapy. I’ll probably miss two-two and a half months, but I should be good to go sometime after New Year’s.” He takes a deep breath. “But it’s okay,” he says like he’s trying to convince himself. “It’s okay.”

There’s a moment of silence, interrupted only by the way their burger wrappers crinkle as they eat.

“Shit,” Ian says then. “I should probably call my parents.”

.

There are seven missed calls from his parents when he checks his phone, so he leaves Cameron in the living room for a moment and excuses himself to his bedroom. He thinks about calling, but then he opens his laptop and hits _call_ on Skype instead. His mother answers almost immediately. 

“Oh my god, baby, are you okay?” she asks. 

She looks like she’s been crying, and a wave of guilt hits Ian right in the center of his chest like a sledgehammer. He should’ve remembered to call them right away, but he was so overwhelmed at the hospital, and his phone has been on silent the whole time, and then he forgot.

“I’m okay, mom,” he says. “They took me to the hospital to evaluate me, but I’m not gonna need surgery. It’s just a sprained MCL, nothing too serious. I should be up and playing in about two-two and a half months. I got a brace for it and they told me to ice it to reduce the swelling, and they gave me crutches for the first couple of days, but I’m fine. I’m gonna need lots of PT, though, so, y’know. It’s gonna be hard, but I’m fine.”

His mother nods for a moment, he lips pressed tightly together like she’s trying to keep it together. It hurts, to see her like this. She looks exhausted beyond just the worry and the tears, though, and Ian knows his dad has slipped a disc and he’s been off work for the past week and a half, so she must’ve been running herself ragged, trying to keep up.

“Sweetheart? Do you need me to come down?” she asks.

She looks relieved when Ian tells her _no_.

Once they disconnect, Ian sits in the dark bedroom for a moment, willing his breathing to even out, trying to calm himself down. He feels the precise moment when it hits him, the enormity of what has just transpired, the fact that he won’t be playing hockey for _months_ , the fact that when he does come back, they might decide they don’t really need him for the rest of the season and send him down to the minors. They have Domashev back, too, even though he didn’t play tonight, to fill the space left by Ian on the fourth line, and Crozier is still in Providence, so they won’t even have to call anyone up. 

Ian lies down on the mattress, the laptop discarded on the floor next to the bed, and he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes until he sees white. His breath stays uneven, ragged. 

“It’s fine,” he repeats to himself. “It’s fine, it’s fine, _you’re_ fine. It’s _fine_.”

After another moment passes, Cameron knocks on the door. 

“Ian? Everything okay?” 

He takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes with his fists.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “You can come in. Just finished skyping my mom.”

It’s getting close to ten now, and Cory should be home any minute, even if it’s just to pack his bag and get a quick nap in before they leave for a long roadie. Their flight to Texas departs at four a.m. from T.F. Green, and Ian was supposed to be on that flight, too, but it looks like he’s going to be missing that one. 

“Is she coming down?” Cameron asks, leaning against the doorframe. 

Ian props himself up on his elbows and turns to face him, then shakes his head. 

“No, she can’t, she—” He can see the way Cameron frowns briefly. “Dad slipped a disc and she can’t just leave him at home, but it’s okay, there’s no point in her coming down anyway. It’s not like I’m bedridden or anything. I just need to take it easy for a while.”

Before Cameron can say anything, the front door opens and they can hear Blueberry’s nails scratching against the hardwood floor as she sprints to the door to greet Cory. Ian gingerly stands up, reaches for the crutches and hobbles out of the room. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Cory asks as soon as he sees Ian, then shifts his attention to Cameron to add a quick, “Hey, man,” before turning back to Ian. “What the fuck happened back there? They said sprained MCL, eight to ten weeks, and there’s a lot of bullshit all over Twitter, so, like, are you okay? I mean, y’know, all things considered.”

“I’m fine,” Ian says, like if he repeats it often enough, it will magically become true. “And yeah, I’ll be out for a while; two months, maybe three. Maybe a little less, I don’t know. They said I got lucky.”

“It looked fucking _terrifying_ ,” Cory admits. “You just went down all of a sudden, and there was blood on the ice, and—”

“Yeah, I split my lip when I fell.” Ian touches the tip of his tongue to his swollen mouth, almost hisses at the touch. “But I’m okay. Just…gotta take it easy for a while.”

“Shit, d’you need me to, like, run to the drugstore or something?” Cory says, dropping his hockey bag to the floor. “I gotta crash soon, and I need to be up at some ass o’clock, but I could still do a quick run or whatever. Are your folks coming?”

Ian shakes his head, not entirely sure which one of Cory’s question it’s supposed to address. 

“No, I’m good, but thanks. Go to sleep and don’t worry about me, ‘kay?” 

“Dude, do you even know me?” Cory laughs. “I worry about _everything_.”

Ian smiles at the joke. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be my job. Now go the fuck to sleep, you have a four a.m. flight.”

Cameron looks between the two of them, then glances back in the direction of the door, hands in the pockets of his jeans. 

“You’re probably tired, too,” he says after a moment, once Cory disappears behind his bedroom door, “so maybe I should go. And, look, I know your parents can’t make it, so if you need anything, just call me, okay? My schedule is pretty flexible and I skipped class for far less serious reasons, so call me whenever, yeah?”

Ian doesn’t think he should, and he doesn’t think he will, but he still says, “Okay. And thanks. For, y’know, everything.”

Cameron just smiles. “Don’t sweat it, for real. And we could do breakfast tomorrow, if you want? I have the morning free, so I could just pick something up on my way over? Because I doubt you’re gonna be in a cooking mood tomorrow first thing in the morning.”

Ian thinks briefly about the state of their fridge and how they were supposed to be leaving in the morning for a few days, so they didn’t bother with shopping. And Cameron _did_ offer, so it’s not like Ian was trying to impose or anything. 

“Okay,” he says, then smiles. “That would be great.”

“Awesome.” Cameron’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he grins. “I’ll see you at nine?”

.

Ian wakes up the next morning to a voicemail from Jack, telling him to take care of himself and wishing him a speedy recovery, and to another voicemail from Yannick, who sounds worried over the phone. 

Ian’s knee is throbbing, and it has been throbbing throughout the night, keeping him up between short, feverish naps once the painkillers they gave him at the hospital started to slowly wear off. He feels sluggish as he gingerly pushes himself up on his elbows and then sits up, rubbing the sand out of his eyes with balled-up fists. 

_i’m alive, will call u later_ , he types out and sends to Yannick, then sits for a moment without moving, slowly coming to full consciousness. Outside the door, Blueberry whines unhappily. 

Shit, he probably should walk her soon. He hasn’t even thought about that. 

“C’mon, girl, come in,” he says, his voice quiet and gentle. With a smile, he watches as Blueberry noses the door open and trots in, then hops onto the bed, avoiding the bad knee entirely when she sees the brace. “You’re a smart, smart girl,” Ian says, kissing the top of her head. Blueberry just licks the side of his neck and pants on him, her breath hot against Ian’s skin.

When he finally makes it out of bed a while later, it’s almost half past eight. The first thing he sees when he enters the kitchen is a post-it note from Cory. 

_Don’t worry about Blueberry,_  
_I arranged for a dog-sitter and I already_  
_walked her before we left so u should be fine._  
_Get well and c u soon!_  
_C._

Blueberry comes in after him and settles by the kitchen table, sighing loudly as she props her head on her paws, watching Ian make himself a cup of coffee before he sits down and idly scrolls through twitter as he waits for Cameron to show up. 

His mentions are full of people wishing him a fast recovery, but there are a few people who have less than kind things to say. It’s nothing new, and Ian should be used to it by now, but, in a way, it never ceases to amaze him, how quick some people are to hate someone they know next to nothing about, and how eager to let the person know. It’s not just him, obviously—Ian knows that Jack’s name has been dragged through the mud on more than one occasion, and there are still people who hate his guts, but to have this kind of attention turned to you at all times can be soul-crushing if you let it.

Ian tries his best not to let it.

He’s icing his knee when the doorbell rings, and Blueberry raises her head before barking half-heartedly while she wags her tail at the same time. Ian leaves the icepack on the table and stumbles to the door. 

“Hey,” Cameron says as soon as Ian opens the door. He’s holding two paper bags in one hand and a cardboard holder with two cups of coffee in the other. “Hope you like eggs Benedict. And I got you some banana bread, too.”

“And coffee.” Ian smiles as he steps aside to let Cameron in.

“London fog, actually,” Cameron says. Ian has no idea what that is.

When he tries it, though, it turns out to be pretty good and not coffee at all, which is just as well, since too much coffee makes him twitchy and his skin feel like there are ants crawling just beneath the surface. 

The eggs Benedict are good, too, and Ian inhales the whole thing in a matter of minutes, suddenly realizing that he was starving, the cheeseburgers from yesterday long forgotten.

“How’s the knee?” Cameron asks once Ian finishes eating. There are still two slices of banana bread on his plate, and Ian suddenly feels embarrassed for eating so fast. 

“Still hurts,” Ian admits. “But I’m fine, really. They want to reevaluate me tomorrow or the day after, once the swelling goes down.”

He still feels groggy, heavy with too little sleep and too much pain, his eyes closing involuntarily from time to time as soon as the warmth of the meal spreads through his body, finally satisfied and full.

“Sorry,” he says, trying to stifle a yawn. “I didn’t really sleep well last night.”

“Shit, no wonder,” Cameron says when Ian pulls up the leg of his pants, picks up the ice pack from where it’s been cooling down in the freezer and goes back to icing the knee. It still looks swollen, the skin reddened and just this side of too warm.

“It’s not that bad, really,” Ian insists. 

It’s something like the truth, he guesses, which is the next best thing, because he’s right, it _could_ be worse: he could need surgery, it could be his ACL that got fucked up, which for an athlete always means surgery and months of rehab, his career could end before it even began in earnest. But there’s also the other side of that: it’s his rookie season, and he’s already out with a serious injury that’s going to sideline him for at least two months if not more. What’s worse, there’s no guarantee that there will be a spot waiting for him on the regular roster once he comes back, the team too far into the season, the lines working together too well to reshuffle them just to make space for Ian, so he might be spending the rest of his time until playoffs in Pawtucket. 

He already knows he’s not winning the Calder—if his production so far hadn’t already taken care of that, over two months spent on long-term IR would. It’s been mostly an afterthought anyway, but he wanted that, once upon a time, before his own head got the better of him and everything went to shit, and Ian had no one but himself to blame for that. 

So he knows it could be a lot worse. But that doesn’t mean much when your own mind is trying to tell you otherwise.

“I never really thought about it, you know,” Ian says after a moment of silence. “What I’d want to do if I weren’t playing hockey. Never really crossed my mind that I could just…not.” 

He takes a deep breath and looks up to meet Cameron’s eyes, then looks back down to where his finger is running against the grain of the wood.

“There was this guy, Dylan, that I’d used to play with back in Maine, before I got drafted to the Q,” he says then. It’s not something he thinks about often, but he can’t deny that it stayed with him, in one way or another. “He was pretty good, his parents were like these stereotypical hockey parents, obsessed with the sport and their kid making it to the big leagues. They could afford it, too, so Dylan was pretty much set to be drafted by some CHL team and have career in the league. Then, our last season before the junior draft, he just…didn’t come back after the summer break. Our coaches told us that he got injured over the break and he couldn’t play hockey anymore. It was a shock for us, I mean, it was so sudden, and it’s not like it happened during a game or anything. It was the offseason, and we just…I don’t even know. It caught us off-guard. But I never really thought about it anyway. What I would’ve done if it’d been me and not Dylan. He went to college this year, I think. I haven’t talked to him in years.”

When he looks up again, Cameron is looking straight at him, his expression calm and open. It’s easy to talk to him, the way it’s always been easy to talk to Yannick, who always listened and never made fun of Ian for taking his time to get the words out. 

It’s not easy to find someone like this when you feel like you’re choking on all that’s left unsaid most of the time.

“You know that my mom didn’t really want me to go to art school at first?” Cameron says after a moment of silence, shaking Ian out of his reverie. “Her family is all about respectable careers, and she always had this idea that I would take over the family business one day. So she wasn’t really convinced when I said I wanted to go to art school. Not that she really disapproved or anything, but she wasn’t _thrilled_ , you know? I did apply to a few art programs, though, and I got in, but if I didn’t, maybe I’d be, I dunno, majoring in architecture right now. That was my second choice, and I think she liked that one a lot more.”

Ian thinks back to when he was still in elementary school, how his parents weren’t the typical hockey parents some of the other guys on the team had, but, looking back, _a lot_ of things in his family revolved around his hockey, for better or for worse.

“My parents always wanted me to do well in hockey,” he starts after a moment, measuring out his words. “And they invested a lot of time and money in me, so that I could do this, so it’s always been, you know. Something to keep in mind. They weren’t really pushing me into this, because I always loved hockey, but once I started, they did their best to make sure I kept going. So I didn’t really have much choice, but it’s not like I wanted to have that choice, because hockey was _it_ for me, you know? And if they told me I couldn’t play… I don’t know, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Cameron nods. “I’m not gonna say that I get it, because I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like, but yeah, I understand, I guess,” he says. “As much as I can, anyway.”

Ian cracks a smile at that. “I like animals. Maybe I’d be, like, a vet or something. That would be nice, I think.”

“Hey, you never know,” Cameron says, “you could still do that after you retire.”

“Yeah,” Ian huffs out a laugh, “I guess I could.”

.

The swelling finally goes down on the third day after the game and Ian takes an Uber to get checked out by the team orthopedist. She’s stern-looking woman in her forties and she takes her time with Ian, examining the knee and looking at the x-rays for a long while. It doesn’t really tell Ian anything, but he can see the way her brows knit together as she looks at the scan on her computer screen and there’s a flash of panic, hot and tight in his throat, a moment when he thinks something must be wrong. 

“You’re going to be fine, Mr. Davies,” the doctor says eventually, turning to Ian, her expression level and no-nonsense. “It’s healing nicely and you should make full recovery in about ten weeks, eight if you’re very lucky. There’s a lot of physiotherapy ahead of you, and you probably won’t be skating for at least six weeks, if not more, but it could’ve gone a lot worse, all things considered. For now, I recommend rest and ibuprofen. Don’t try to push yourself too hard yet, but also don’t avoid putting a little weight on the knee. You just need to let it rest and heal naturally.”

Ian nods, dejected, and he could swear the doctor almost cracks a smile. 

“I know, I know, you hockey types hate that,” she says. “Rest is always the boring answer for you, but you can’t just drop your gloves and fight your own body.”

That startles a laugh out of Ian, and this time, the doctor smiles as well. 

“We’ll make a PT appointment for you next week,” she says. “Until then, just rest and let your body heal.”

The arena is almost deserted when he gets there twenty minutes later to pick up the stuff he left in the locker room when they rushed him to the hospital; the front office is busy enough, because it always is, but the hallways around the training facility and the main arena are almost deserted. When he peeks inside the practice rink, there’s a peewee practice going on, and Ian stands there for a longer while, watching the kids practice odd-man rushes. 

His leg is still in a brace, but at least he left his crutches back at home, and he leans against the doorframe, trying to shift his weight to avoid straining the knee as he keeps on watching. 

He’s about to turn back and leave when one of the kids sitting on the bench spots him, and he turns around excitedly, elbowing his teammate in the ribs and pointing back towards Ian, but their assistant coach makes a stern comment and the boys turn their attention back to the ice. Once the bench is empty, she makes her way over to where Ian is still standing. 

She can’t be more than twenty, maybe twenty-one, and her curly hair is gathered into a messy ponytail. 

“Can I help you?” she asks. “We have the rink booked until five, I checked with the front office.”

“No, sorry, I just…” Ian says, flustered. “I was just passing by, picking up some things from the locker room. Sorry to interrupt practice, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know you guys were in here.”

“That’s okay, but I think it’s distracting the kids,” she says, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the ice. “They didn’t expect to have someone from the team show up.”

Ian shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocks on the balls of his heels, trying to swallow the hiss that escapes when he puts too much weight on his injured knee. 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he says, then yanks one hand out of his pocket and reaches out to the girl. “I’m, uh…I’m Ian Davies. Nice to meet you.”

“Tamika Johnson,” she says as she shakes his hand.

That gives Ian a moment of pause.

“Wait, don’t you play hockey for Brown?” 

She looks at him for a moment with scrutiny. “Nice catch,” she says eventually. “And yeah, I do.”

Ian shifts against the doorframe.

“So do you wanna play hockey after college or,” he gestures with his head to the kids on the ice, “are you gonna go into coaching?”

She laughs—it’s a short, sharp sound that echoes for a moment in the open space. 

“If things continue to be the way they are now, I’m gonna have to do both anyway,” she says. “It’s not like I could afford not having a day job.”

Ian can feel the tips of his ears burning, embarrassed. It’s not like he doesn’t know that what they pay in the NWHL is peanuts in comparison to what they make in the NHL. He just didn’t really think before asking, like a total idiot. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I…yeah, sorry. I should probably go.”

Tamika gives him a look. 

“Or you could stay until the end of practice and sign something for the kids,” she says. “They’d be pretty stoked. Sorry about the knee, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’m trying to take it easy.”

She ends up going back to the bench a moment later, while Ian stays in the back, following the practice for a while before he walks out to loiter in the hallway. Practice finishes on time, and it takes the kids some time to get showered and dressed, but after about fifteen minutes, the locker room door opens and the boys start spilling out, their faces still red from the cold and their hair sticking up in all directions. 

It’s almost hard to believe that Ian was just like those kids only a few years ago, back when he could just lace up his skates and get out there to play, nothing more on his mind. It didn’t stay that way for very long, not when—by the time he graduated to bantam and got his first serious growth spurt—he started to think that maybe he really could cut it in the big leagues. 

He knows how lucky he is, in a way, because that’s the dream for a lot of kids who play hockey from the early childhood, but not a lot of those kids actually make it to the juniors, much less to the NHL. Ian is one of the few. The rest of those kids usually go on to play in college, if they’re lucky, or in rec leagues, or they just stop playing altogether at some point. Out of the guys he used to play with back in Maine, just a few made it to the juniors, and all of them except for Ian went undrafted after that. 

So chances are that out of all these boys, there will be none who will get to play hockey professionally, but the wonderful thing about being eleven is that it doesn’t really matter, not yet, not when there are games to be played and teammates to joke around with. 

Unless you’re Jack Zimmermann, Ian guesses, but that’s a different thing entirely.

They make their way over to the lobby and he chats with the boys for a while and signs a few things under the watchful eye of Tamika while the parents slowly start to file in to take their children home. For some of these parents, hockey will always be the most important thing in their child’s life, the thing that dictates everything in the lives of the entire family, right until it won’t be, because their kid will either grow up or quit. It happened with a few of the guys from his old team in Maine, too, guys who just stopped coming to practice and quit, because they liked hockey, but not as much as their parents liked the fact that their child was playing hockey. Some just continued to be miserable until they went undrafted in the juniors draft and then could finally breathe more freely. 

It was never like that for Ian back then, but it was hard in other ways, too.

“Good luck with the season,” he tells Tamika on his way out, and she nods with a smile. 

“Yeah, you too,” she says. “And good luck with PT, you’re gonna need it.”

Ian licks his lips and swallows. “Yeah. I know.”

.

His mother calls him the next day just after breakfast. 

“How are you feeling, baby?” she asks, a note of worry in her voice. “Are you taking good care of yourself?”

Ian holds the phone between his cheek and his shoulder as he puts the bowl away into the sink and the oatmeal leftovers into the fridge.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I got a brace and painkillers, and I’m hopefully starting PT next week. The doctor said I should go back to skating in six weeks, maybe. I’m just mostly staying around the apartment for now, and the guys are out on a roadie, so I’m alone, but I got my groceries delivered, and Cameron stops by whenever he has a moment. How’s dad?”

She sighs. 

“He’s a bit better, we think. He can at least walk up and down the stairs now, so I could tidy up the downstairs guest room for Kevin’s fiancée.”

Ian leans against the counter. “Kevin’s coming home?”

“No, no, it’s just Lilah this time.” Ian can almost see her shaking her head. “Her parents are having some…difficulties right now and I thought she’d appreciate some peace and quiet.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Ian says, swallowing down the disappointment. “Say hi to her for me, okay? And say hi to dad.” 

“I’ll make sure to do that, sweetheart,” his mom says, then pauses for a moment before asking, “So who’s Cameron?”

“I told you about him, he’s a friend,” Ian explains, trying to remember whether he ever mentioned him by name. “I met him through Cory Smith’s girlfriend. He’s a student at Brown. And since the guys are out on a road trip, he’s been helping me a little. Y’know, with cooking and stuff.”

“Oh, how nice,” his mom says. “Just remember you shouldn’t put him out too much. You’re a grown boy, Ian, you need to take some responsibility.”

Ian’s heart sinks a little, because the thing is—he knows his mom is right, he knows he’s been using Cameron as a crutch far too much these past few days, relying on him when he should just suck it up and deal. But most of the time, it’s been Cameron who offered, so maybe it’s not all on Ian.

“Yeah, I know, mom,” he says. “I, uh, I should probably go lie down or something, maybe watch some tape. I’ll call you, okay?”

Once they disconnect, Ian slowly walks back to his bedroom and reaches for the laptop lying on top of the covers. He watches tape for a while even though there’s no reason for him to do that, and by noon, he’s feeling a little bored and a little more than discouraged. What is he even doing all that for if he can’t _play_? It’s not like he’s gonna be any help to the guys for at least eight more weeks, and what good does it do him to watch the fucking Oilers if by the time Ian comes back—if he comes back—they will have already played Edmonton for the last time during the regular season (and the Oilers probably won’t be making the playoffs, if their recent record is anything to go by).

He feels angry with himself, frustrated and restless, feeling trapped in the four walls of the apartment, like he’s getting cabin fever after just a few days spent on IR. It’s pathetic, and he should be better than that.

He makes himself early lunch and eats while watching reruns of _Jane the Virgin_ , because Holster got them all hooked and it’s ridiculous enough to be enjoyable.

Around two in the afternoon, he decides to take a nap, hoping it will help with his restlessness, the insistent feeling buzzing just under his skin, the tiny, invisible ants walking up and down his arms, his abdomen, his back. 

When he does finally fall asleep, after some tossing and turning that makes him almost give up at one point, his sleep is feverish and he wakes up three hours later, groggy and disoriented, and even more tired than before. The overwhelming sensation of restlessness is still there, too, and he feels unbalanced, like a glass that has been tipped over. 

Cameron is supposed to stop by in the evening after class, and on the one hand, Ian can’t wait to see him again, but on the other hand, he remembers what his mom said to him earlier, about not putting people out and handling things like an adult. 

He doesn’t quite have his heart in his throat when he texts Cameron, but it’s close. 

Cameron doesn’t text back. Instead, he calls.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he says as soon as Ian picks up. “What’s up with that text?”

Ian rolls over onto his back and throws an arm across his face, covering his eyes, and he slowly exhales through his nose before answering. 

“Nothing,” he says. “I was just thinking about, you know, how we’ve been hanging out a lot lately, and I guess I hadn’t realized that I was taking up a lot of your time, and just— I don’t know, I wanted to double-check, I guess. I’m a grown up and I need to be able to handle things like a grown up.”

Cameron is silent for a moment, and then Ian hears him sigh on the other end of the line. 

“I don’t know where you got this idea that handling things like an adult means handling them all on your own, but I can tell you right now that it’s bullshit,” he says. “I mean, if you _don’t_ want to see me, that’s one thing. But if that’s not what this is about, we’re still on for the evening, right?”

Ian licks his lips, embarrassment slowly crawling its way up his throat, hot and bitter, like bile. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he says as he presses down on his closed eyelids with his fingers until he starts to see white spots. “I…yeah, of course I want to hang out, I just thought— I don’t even know what I thought. Sorry.”

Blueberry chooses this moment to walk into the bedroom and nudge Ian’s elbow with her nose. It’s cold and wet, and then the nudge is followed by a lick of her tongue. Ian reaches down to pat her on the head.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Cameron says. “I just thought that maybe something happened, but if everything’s okay, then I’ll see you in a few hours, yeah?”

Ian smiles despite himself. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll see you.”

.

The Falconers come back from the road trip with three wins and one loss in overtime. Cory stumbles into the apartment sometime around three in the morning, and Ian knows that only because he’s momentarily awoken by the clicking of Blueberry’s nails on the hardwood floor as she races to meet Cory at the door, but he falls back asleep about five minutes later. 

There’s no practice until later in the afternoon, which Ian still has memorized even though he can’t actually go, but when he gets up around eight, Cory is already up, looking bleary-eyed and exhausted as he methodically destroys his breakfast. 

Ian watched the games, wishing he could’ve been there, out with the team, sick of all the things beyond his control. 

“Hey, man, how’ve you been?” Cory asks as soon as he spots Ian. “Hanging in there?”

Ian reaches into the hanging cupboard for a mug and presses the button on their fancy coffee machine they got as a housewarming gift from Cory’s sister. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Ian says, which is at the same time the truth and a lie. 

He doesn’t really feel fine, too anxious about the injury and his place on the roster to make the dull ache just below his sternum go away, but he’s managing to keep his head above water, and that’s as good as he can expect, he guesses, so he _is_ more or less okay, even if that’s not the whole story.

“I’m starting PT soon,” he adds. “The doctors say I should be back skating in six weeks, if all goes well.”

Cory nods, his mouth too full to answer. He chews slowly, thoroughly, and swallows before saying, “Hey, wanna come to practice today? It’s, like, totally cool if you don’t, but I thought you might want to see the guys. They’re moping, okay, and that shit just ain’t pretty.”

Ian hesitates. 

On the one hand, everything inside of him is telling him _no_ —he knows it’s going to hurt, the way observing those kids practice after hours didn’t. He almost can’t imagine sitting on that bench in just his street clothes, his skates hung up for the next couple of months. He knows the scrape of the ice under the skates and the sound of the stick hitting a puck better, more intimately, than he knows his own breathing. He could close his eyes and plug his ears, and he could still hear it in his mind. For someone who grew up on the ice, being forced off is one of the worst things that can happen. 

He got lucky—apart from some scratches due to the flu and a few minor scrapes and bruises that healed in a matter of days, Ian got through the Juniors without any major injuries. Some young players don’t have that luck. But the other side of that is that he has no idea how to handle this now that it’s happened and he’s here, stuck off the ice, feeling useless and frustrated. 

But on the other hand, he _wants_ to be there. He doesn’t want to stay in the empty apartment to wallow in misery, and if it turns out he can’t handle it, he can always leave. 

“Yeah,” he ends up saying. “I’ll come with you.”

.

He gets mobbed as soon as he walks into the locker room. 

“Gently, fucking _gently_!” Aaronowitz yells to the guys who come up to hug Ian, even though he’s the one clinging to his neck and patting him furiously on the back at the same time. 

It’s a strange thing, to walk into a locker room and see your stall occupied, and it’s almost like the space left behind him has been already filled, because the universe doesn’t tolerate void. Intellectually, he knows it’s irrational, but he can’t help the feeling coiling slowly around his stomach just to squeeze painfully.

Before the team skates out for warm-ups, Jack comes up to Ian and puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“How are you holding up?” he asks. “I know it must be hard for you.”

Ian licks his lips and looks away for a moment before he braces himself to look straight at Jack. He can be so intense sometimes, in a good way, but it still takes a lot to look him in the eyes in those moments.

“I’m doing okay,” he says eventually. “It could’ve been worse.”

Jack looks over his shoulder to the now-empty locker room, then back to Ian. 

“Wait for me after practice, okay?” he says. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Ian just nods, already running through dozens of possibilities in his head.

It’s beyond hard to watch the team practice when he’s effectively bound to the bench. It’s open to the public, so there are a few people in the stands, watching, and Ian tries not to look over his shoulder to check if they’re watching the ice or him. He knows people like to gawk, and it’s the first time he’s been out with the team since his injury, so it’s news, at least in Providence. 

It’s pretty transparent, the way the guys keep hanging out near the bench whenever they have a short break in the drills, the way they’re trying to make Ian feel better, but it just makes him feel like a petulant child who needs to be humored at all times. He appreciates what they’re trying to do, but he doesn’t want to feel like a burden. Not again. Not after he’s made at least a few steps in the right direction.

Right now, about two feet to Ian’s right, almost the entirety of their blue line is leaning against the boards, giggling about Christiansen, who looks half-asleep on his skates and has a giant hickey on the underside of his jaw that his chinstrap doesn’t cover. Aaronowitz, who’s standing closest to the bench, keeps nudging Ian in the shoulder with his elbow, trying his best to include him in the ribbing.

“Yo, peanut gallery over there, quit with the chirping!” Schumer yells from across the ice.

Aaronowitz takes off the glove just so he can give him the finger properly.

Ian slinks away in the middle of practice, suddenly too overwhelmed to keep it together as he watches his teammates run drills and laugh, joke around whenever they get a moment to catch their breath. He feels like his entire chest is being crushed by some impossible weight, his lungs constricted and his throat on fire, burning with a bitter, acidic taste. When he crams them into the pockets of his jeans, his hands are shaking. 

He stops in the deserted hallway of the practice rink and leans against the wall, breathing loudly and rapidly as he tries to get his body under control. It takes him a long, long while to calm down enough that he feels like he can open his eyes again, and when he does, the wall in front of him looks blurry until he blinks a few times to chase away the sensation. 

He wants to go home. He even contemplates just getting his things and going home before they wrap it up, but he promised Jack he’d wait for him after practice, and Jack is his captain—more than that, Jack is his _friend_ , so he stays.

He has no way of knowing what his face must look like, but whatever it is, it’s not good, because when Bergson walks out of the locker room and finds Ian loitering in the hallway, he asks, “Dude, you okay? Your lunch not agreeing with you?”

Ian makes a feeble attempt at a smile. “Something like that,” he says. “Hey, d’you know if Jack is coming?”

“Yeah, he should be heading out in a moment, I think,” Bergson says. “Keep your chin up, buttercup, yeah? And don’t be a stranger.”

He doesn’t ruffle Ian’s hair on his way out, but it’s a close thing.

.

Jack walks out of the locker room about five minutes later, takes one look at Ian, hesitates for a moment and says, “Come on, let’s go eat. My treat.”

Ian took a Uber to the rink earlier, so he just nods and walks straight to Jack’s car, parked in the underground parking lot. 

There are a lot of flashy cars in the parking lot, because god knows hockey players like their four wheels fast and expensive, even if they’re ready to mock each other for it, like that time Christiansen renegotiated his contract and then bought himself a very small, very compact sports car with the bonus—so tiny that he could barely fit inside. But Jack drives a hybrid Honda that’s neither expensive nor flashy; it’s this type of sensible, no-nonsense car that Ian wouldn’t expect from someone who’s a literal millionaire and grew up around more wealth that Ian has seen in his entire life.

Jack takes him to some bistro Ian has never been to before. It’s too early for dinner and too late for lunch, so the place is not very crowded, and when they walk in, the wait staff recognize Jack on sight, so Ian guesses he must be a regular, or they’re just really into hockey.

They order after a moment, and when the server leaves them alone at the table, Jack takes a deep breath and looks straight at Ian, appraising. 

“How are you holding up?” he asks. 

Ian shrugs. “I’m okay, mostly. I’m starting PT soon, I should be back to skating in about six weeks.”

Jack is silent for a long while after that, and the silence stretches between them, not uncomfortable, but maybe just the tiniest bit tense. Ian knows that Jack takes his duties as team captain seriously, and he knows that taking care of the rookies is one of those responsibilities, so, really, he should’ve seen that coming. 

“I’m not going to pretend I’m great at talking about these things,” Jack says next, and it catches Ian off-guard, “but I just wanted to tell you that sometimes it’s okay not to be okay. And that sometimes it’s okay to talk about this to other people. It took me a while to get that, but it helped, so I thought maybe it would help you to hear this from someone who’s not a GM or a doctor. And you don’t have to do anything with this if you don’t want to, but I asked around, just in case you _do_ want to talk about this, or about anything else, really.”

He reaches into his pocket for a folded piece of paper and puts it in front of Ian. When Ian unfolds it, there’s a name and a phone number written down in Jack’s handwriting. 

“I asked my therapist to recommend a good sports psychologist in Providence, and this is the name she gave me,” Jack continues. Ian’s throat feels completely dry, and he licks his lips nervously. “And like I said, you don’t have to do anything with this, but if you feel like you maybe want to talk to someone who’s equipped to handle all the stuff we go through every day, it’s there. And if you want to talk to someone who had been where you are now, I’m here, too.”

His first instinct is to say that he doesn’t need this, that he’s fine, that he’s _dealing_. 

But maybe that’s the entire problem. Maybe the entire point of what Jack is saying is that _dealing_ is not enough in the long run. 

He folds the piece of paper in half and puts it in his pocket. He has no idea if he’ll ever even use it, but he can have it, just in case. For if it ever gets worse. 

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m fine, but I’ll…I’ll think about it.”

.

PT is pain and sweat, and tears. 

His physiotherapist is a woman named Jade who can’t be older than twenty-nine, maybe thirty, but could already give some NHL coaches a run for their money when it comes to pushing people to their limits. She, at least, tells him to stop when it becomes too much. 

It’s hard not to want to do _more_ , despite the pain, but Ian tries to tell himself time and time again that if he pushes too hard, it’s only going to set him back. 

Healing, Jade tells him, is a process.

The only way to see this through, it seems, is to take it one day at a time. So Ian does, or at least tries to, and it’s not that bad, most of the time. But then there are also moments when he catches himself desperately trying to take a breath and finds himself unable to do it; there are long, exhausting hours in the middle of the night where he can’t seem to fall asleep, his own mind and body betraying him as he tries to calm down. It’s a hard pill to swallow, the thought that your own brain is a traitor. 

He doesn’t go with Cory to practice anymore. Most of the time, it’s because it overlaps with his PT appointments, but even when it doesn’t, he just stays home. It’s better like this, at least for the time being. 

“Jack gave me a number to some sports psychologist, you know?” he says to his mother when he calls her, two weeks into his physical therapy. He hasn’t been sleeping very well lately, and the crushing weight on his chest doesn’t seem to disappear these days, no matter how deep the breaths he’s trying to take are. “Just in case I wanted to talk to someone about stuff. Like, you know, with the injury and everything.”

“But you’ve been doing so well,” his mom says as Ian unfolds and refolds the piece of paper with the psychologist’s name on it. It’s hard to read her tone over the static. “Why would you need to see a psychologist?”

Ian runs the tips of his fingernails along the edges of the paper back and forth a few times before answering. 

“I dunno, but you know how Jack—” he pauses, unsure how to phrase this. “He said it really helps, to talk about this stuff. And he even has a therapist in Boston, not just, like, in Montreal or something. I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it. It’s just something I remembered just now.”

That’s a lie. After he’d come home that day, he put the piece of paper in his desk drawer, but he took it out a few times, just to look at the name and the digits, written in Jack’s neat handwriting, and then put it back in the drawer.

“Well, if you think it’s for the best,” his mother says in a tone that tells a different story. “But I don’t understand why you can’t talk to me, or to one of your brothers. Brian has a stressful job, too, and same with Kevin, so I’m sure one of them could help you get this thing sorted out. You shouldn’t turn to strangers before you turn to your own family.”

She sounds genuinely hurt, but she doesn’t seem to understand that none of them get this, because being a soldier is nothing like being an athlete, and they’re not even _here_ to help him through this.

“I don’t know,” Ian says in the end. “I’ll have to think about this.”

Once they finally disconnect, Ian sits at his desk for a long while, still playing with the folded piece of paper in his hands. 

Then he takes a deep breath and dials the number.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want, come say hi on [tumblr](http://idrilka.tumblr.com) :)


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